Squid jigs

Lure · Last reviewed 2026-08-22

A weighted, cloth-bodied lure with a crown of upward spines instead of hooks — the only lure in fishing designed to be gripped rather than to hook, because a squid has nothing to hook it by.

Safety: hooks and barbs — minor injury. 3 more points apply here.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

A squid jig is not a jig in the sense the rest of the tackle box uses the word. It is closer to a plug: a shrimp-shaped body, usually cloth-covered over a hard shell, with a streamlined weight fixed under the throat and a crown of fine upward-pointing spines at the tail.

EVERY PART OF THAT IS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE ANIMAL. A squid has no jaw to set a hook into. It takes prey by wrapping it in two long tentacles and drawing it back to the arms, and it will let go the moment the prey stops feeling right. So the jig does not hook the squid — the squid grips the jig, and the spines simply stop it letting go. That is also why a squid jig has no barbs and why unhooking one is a matter of shaking rather than of unhooking.

THE KEEL WEIGHT IS THE DESIGN. It sits under the throat rather than in the head or the tail, which makes the jig swim nose-up and sink at a rate that is a designed property rather than an accident of mass. Everything about how the lure is worked — snap the rod, then let it sink back on a tight line — depends on that sink being predictable, because the take happens on the descent and on the pause, not on the lift.

SIZING IS JAPANESE AND WILL LOOK STRANGE. Squid jigs are numbered in sun, an old unit slightly over an inch, so a jig marked 2.5 is roughly two and a half sun long and a jig marked 3.5 is longer, heavier and sinks faster. The number is a length, not a weight and not a hook size. Which one suits a session is decided by depth, wind and current on that ground, and no number here is a recommendation.

COLOUR IS ARGUED ABOUT MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, and the argument is complicated by the fact that squid are almost certainly colour-blind — they have a single visual pigment. What the cloth is doing is contrast and reflectance rather than hue as a squid experiences it, and practitioner accounts converge on bright cloths in daylight and dark or luminous ones after dark rather than on any particular colour. FishingHQ reports that convergence and does not pretend it is a finding.

At a glance

Depth range: Shore eging is inshore, shallow work — harbour walls, rock edges, weed and seagrass ground — and the jig is chosen to reach the bottom in the depth and current present rather than to fish deep. No depth figure is published here: the sources that give one give their own coast's.

What it does in the water

Nose-up and level on the drop rather than head-down, because the weight is a keel under the throat rather than a head. On the rod snap it darts forward and upward; released, it settles back and sinks at a rate the keel decides, swimming rather than dropping. That controlled descent is the working part of the lure — it is what a squid follows and what it grabs.

How it is worked

Cast, let it sink, then a run of sharp upward rod snaps in quick succession with the slack reeled between them, then a pause on a tight line while the jig sinks back at an angle towards you. Repeat. The take arrives during the sink or on the pause and registers as a faint tap or as weight that was not there — a squid seizing the jig with its tentacles, often tapping several times first. The answer is to raise the rod firmly and smoothly to seat the spines, never to strike: a struck squid lets go.

Fish it catches

Why these are here, and the sources (3)

What experienced anglers do — 3 connections

How FishingHQ classifies this: practitioner consensus. Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.

Common cuttlefish
Cuttlefish take the same spined jig in the same way, and the practitioner accounts treat the two as one tackle problem with a different working depth.
- Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A specialist angling feature on eging, read in full, describing the jig, the tackle and the retrieve.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on squid-jig use.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
European squid
A squid has no jaw to hook, so the lure is designed to be gripped and held by the spine crown rather than to hook — which makes this the only lure family matched to its quarry by the quarry's anatomy rather than by its feeding behaviour.
- Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A specialist angling feature on eging, read in full, describing the jig, the tackle and the retrieve.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on squid-jig use.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Veined squid
The two squid are not separated by the tackle: practitioner accounts describe the same jigs and the same retrieve, with the identification made after landing rather than before casting.
- Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A specialist angling feature on eging, read in full, describing the jig, the tackle and the retrieve.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on squid-jig use.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

What it imitates

A prawn or small shrimp, which is what the shape, the cloth body and the nose-up posture are all doing. The resemblance is unusually literal for a lure, and unusually load-bearing: a squid decides whether to keep hold after it has already got the thing in its tentacles, so the jig has to survive being felt as well as being seen.

Where it stops working

The squid is gripping rather than hooked, so a slack line loses it. Contact through the sink is the whole technique and wind is what takes it away — which is why a blowy day defeats eging more completely than it defeats most lure fishing.
The spines foul netting, clothing and fingers readily, and a crown of them is harder to free from a landing net than a treble.
Sizing is a length in sun rather than a weight, so a squid jig cannot be matched to a rod's casting rating the way any other lure can.
Cloth bodies tear on rock and on the squid's own beak, and a torn body changes the sink the whole method depends on.
Where squid, cuttlefish and octopus are taken, minimum sizes, seasons, permitted gear and — in several countries — the number of jigs on a line are regulated separately from finfish. That is a local question with a local answer.

Safety

Hooks and barbs — Minor injury

A crown of fine unbarbed spines catches skin, clothing and net mesh easily. They are barbless, so they come out, but a squid attached to one is a moving weight on the other end.

What reduces it: Hold the jig by the body rather than near the crown, and unhook a squid over the water or over a hard surface rather than over a net.

Injury while handling fish — Minor injury

A landed squid jets water and ink under pressure and can bite with a hard beak between the arms.

What reduces it: Point it away from yourself and from anybody else on landing, expect the ink, and keep fingers clear of the centre of the arms.

Precautions that always apply here

Keep fingers out of the gills and clear of the teeth. Gill damage is usually fatal to the fish, and several species will remove skin from a finger.
Wet your hands before touching a fish. Dry hands strip the protective mucus layer that keeps infection out.

Where to go next

Understanding it

Why these are here, and the sources (2)

What experienced anglers do — 2 connections

Squid at night, and what lights actually do
The luminous and dark cloths exist for after dark, and the practitioner convergence on when to use which is the whole of what the colour argument actually settles.
- Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A specialist angling feature on eging, read in full, describing the jig, the tackle and the retrieve.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on squid-jig use.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
What squid fishing actually is
A reader meeting a spined cloth prawn needs the animal explained before the object, because every design decision in the jig is a consequence of how a squid takes prey.
- Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A specialist angling feature on eging, read in full, describing the jig, the tackle and the retrieve.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on squid-jig use.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

More lures

Not related to this page — just the rest of the section. There is little else joined to this subject yet, and a short page should still lead somewhere.

Sources for this page

Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: That an egi is built like a plug with a streamlined keel weight under the throat, that its spine crown is carried clear of the bottom, that sizes are numbered in sun, and the snap-and-sink retrieve with the take arriving as a faint tap answered by raising rather than striking.States this directlyPassage read and verified
General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on cloth colour — bright by day, dark or luminous after dark — which is reported as convergence among practitioners rather than as a finding.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

How FishingHQ labels evidence is explained in the evidence policy.

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