My name is Richard Cross. In 1994, I started jig fishing for trout on the White and North Fork Rivers of the Ozark Mountains of north-central Arkansas. I graduated high school in the small town of Norfork, Arkansas, trout fishing all through school. Before I moved to Arkansas, my family would come over on vacation from Memphis and spend a couple of weeks every year fishing and boating.
I had caught trout in many different ways throughout the years. I was tired of using corn, worms, power eggs, and other traditional forms of bait. I made up my mind to concentrate efforts on learning how to fly fish. My parents owned a restaurant in Salesville, AR, and one of the regular customers gave me some flies. Through his generosity, I learned to catch fish on them with a fly rod. However, at that time of my life, I didn’t have a chance to spend the time and put in the effort to become proficient.
About 1995, I decided to take up fly fishing again. I had a conversation with a business associate and friend of mine about fishing, namely trout fishing. He asked me if I had ever used jigs to catch trout; I said that I had not. After giving me a handful of some jigs that he had and a pointer or two on how to fish them, he said to let me know how I did the next time I got a chance to go fishing. I took those jigs and went to the White River, below Beaver Dam, in northwest Arkansas, east of Rogers, AR. I was wading that day. What happened was incredible. I caught more and bigger trout than typical. Like any proud fisherman, I had to have a picture, so I stopped at the Beaver Dam Store and had them take a picture of my nice limit of rainbows. That picture was on the wall in the store for a long time.
From that point on, I was hooked on jig fishing. As time went by, good-quality jigs with the right action were hard to find. In early 1996, I started doing some research on molds try to find out how to produce great action. There was nothing out there that met my desire. I spoke with local machine shops about making a set of molds for jigs, and by the conversations I had, you could tell that nobody wanted to mess with making lure molds.
One of the vendors I use in my regular business was located next to War Eagle Custom Lures, a custom lure maker in Rogers, AR. One day, I stopped in and talked to the guys, asking them a bunch of questions on how they got started in the spinnerbait business. They had similar stories about local machine shops, and after we swapped stories, I asked them what they were doing for molds now. They gave me the name of a lure manufacturing company in Mtn. Home, AR. I told them that I used to live in that area and that there would be trout fishing in the area. They gave me the phone number, and I called to make an appointment to discuss molds and jigs.
The rest is history. The folks at KG Enterprise in Mtn. Home, AR worked with me, and we kept modifying the jig head until we got just the right action. From that point forward, every jig was manufactured the same. They weigh what they’re supposed to. The heads are powder-coated and not just dipped in paint or baked in an oven. The powder coating gives better durability and lasts longer under real fishing conditions. The most important part of any jig is the hook, so we use only the best: The Mustad Ultra Point black nickel hooks are sharp when they’re new and stay sharper longer. As a fisherman myself, I would rather lose a few jigs than have a big fish straighten out a hook.
So there you have it. Jigs designed by fishermen for fishermen! As you can see from pictures and testimonials, there are people all over the country who successfully use the White River Zig Jigs to catch more and bigger fish than they’ve caught in their lives.
Good Fishing!
- Richard Cross