jugs

just no live bait

we have always heard that you have your name, address, and telephone no. on the jugs. Does anybody know for sure?????

Thats for trotlines and set lines. Jug fishing is pretty much wide open except for the bait as mentioned above.

In Ohio, we have to have name/address on the jugs as well. I just put name, city and state though. In case someone sees one of your jugs, you dont want them to know which house is unoccupied for the night.

Never thought about that but oh well. There are a couple of jugs floating the cape that we couldn't find. Hate that happening because it looks like we are trashing up the river. If anyone fishes riverside you know what I'm talking about.

I guess the best thing we can do is leave a little room in the boat and just pick up any jugs that were lost everytime we go and someday it wont look so bad.

One of my pet peeves is the "lost" jugs that people leave behind. I stay with mine and keep an eye out for anyone looking my jugs besides me. I try to never leave one behind. I've "lost" 3 in ten years of jugging.

Yeah I guess sometimes a bigger fish will hook up and take the jug under then get tangled up under the water somewhere, then eventually the jug will come back up and look bad. I dont think its anyones intention to leave them there but sometimes its unavoidable, as long as we pick them up its fine though.

On my last jugging trip, I ruined the prop on my new outboard trying to retreive jugs that were hung on underwater dikes. When I jug an area frequently, I always keep an eye out for any jugs that I lost on previous trips, and when possible, I retreive them. I don't like losing jugs, but over the past 22 years, I've found that there are often situations where it's just impossible to avoid it. IMO, it's no different than someone casting as far as possible from shore, getting hung up, and having to break off, leaving 40 or 50 yards of line in the water. Yes, you can sometimes see the jug, but that has the advantage of letting you avoid it; I can't begin to count the times I've hung up on line that was broken off in the water. Now, I'll agree that people shouldn't deliberately leave jugs in the water any more than they should pull the line off their reel when respooling, and throw the old line in the water, but I don't think either one of those situations happens very often.

We don't ever leave any jugs on purpose, but like jtrew said we are not going to sink the boat trying to get them. What I was trying to say in my last post was the cape fear looks like a landfill about half the time.

I've got a nice little steel rod about 3' long that I bought for my grandkids to start out on, and I've been thinking about rigging it up with some heavier line and a weighted treble hook so I can cast out and snag any jugs that are hung up in a spot too dangerous to reach with the boat. Sounds like a good idea, but it may not work as well as it sounds.

what pound line should i use when jugging

I think it would depend on what for and where you are fishing as to what size line to use. Personally I use the same nylon line that I use for trot line stagings which I think is about 75-80 lb. test and It has worked fine for me.
Schoe

I like parachute cord for jugs. It doesn't get wisted and unravel like trotline cord does.

I use 100# test nylon for my juglines and trotline drops. I've had lots of trouble with the twisted line coming untwisted on the trotline drops, so I use braided for them, but I don't have that problem with my juglines, so I'm happy using twisted. I like using strong line for my jugs, but I often get hung up and have to break the line; anything stronger than 100# test is just too hard to break with your bare hands while in a boat.

I use 80# braided Dacron. Carry a foot long piece of 2by2 board in cause you get snagged.

Yeah you definitely want to get every piece of that stuff back, its (only) $20 for 150 yds!!!!

I use a one inch wooden rod 5 feet long with a double hook on the end made of Clothes Hanger wire to retrieve those jugs that are impossible to get to. The rod is made of Hickory and is very durable. Works for me!!!!

I just thought of something, probably already thought of but if you cut a couple notches in the wood and wrap the line up on it you could easily pull in a big fish without worrying about hooking of cutting your hands.