Fish Gigging|Fish Gigs
If you've ever been gigging for fresh water fish, you probably have some good memories. Those memories could be of your successes at gigging, your failures at gigging, or even your mishaps while gigging. Non the less, gigging is a great way to spend your fall and winter evenings on the water.
Here is a quick overview of what fresh water fish gigging is all about, in case you are new to term, "gigging" (or as some folks say "giggin"). "Gigging" is a way of harvesting fish (yellow sucker, hog sucker, red horse, and drum). The gigger uses a long wooden or fiberglass pole with a metal gig attached. The gigger stands on the front of the boat (usually along a rail) and as the boat motors upstream. Lights are attached to the rail, that shine out into the water in the front and on the sides of the boat. The lights nowadays are usually halogen lights that are powered by a generator inside the boat.
As the lights illuminate the bottom of the river, the gigger watches for fish. When a desired fish is spotted, the gigger slowly places the gig pole in the water and attempts to stab the fish just behind the head. If sucessful, the barbs on the gig hold the fish on the gig and the pole is lifted out of the water and the fish is raked off in a bucket or just in the bottom of the boat.
Gigging can be great fun for a small group of people in each boat. My boat is an aluminum boat with a 20 hp Johnson motor. On Current River, we can put three or four people in the boat at a time. We run down river to where we want to start gigging and then start motoring up the river, against the current, slowly as one or two people stand on the front of the boat and gig fish. After a certain number of fish are gigged or enough time goes by, we switch out and let the others gig for a while.
I wanted to add some visual material, so I decided to start a page to include gigging photos. Our Ozark Fish Gigs Pictures has a limited number of photos. Hopefully next season, we can get better quality and more quantity of pictures.
