Trolling with jig head

Is using a jig head as weight for trolling a bad idea?
E.g. in SF bay where we’re limited to one line, but allowed three hooks, the third hook could be a heavy jig head with soft plastic bounced on the bottom.
Now, my intuition says this might be a bad idea because it would be common practice otherwise.. but curious to hear your thoughts

I have never trolled but have plugged with that setup.  3/4oz jig head with a swimbaits, then 12-18” above with a hook and curly tail grub or smaller 3-4” swimbait.

Never trolled, but drifted ocean at Santa Cruz.  Got 2 lingcod and 19# halibut drifting swimbait new par mile buoy.   Should work fine in bay.

I've never done it but I know a couple of people who does but I don't think they had much success.

It’s certainly an option.  3-4oz jig head to keep on the bottom.  Watch the scope of your line though to determine speed.  You can tell when you’re off the bottom.  When you’ve got 30 ft. Out and it’s parallel to the surface or seems so you know you’re mid column.  Striper’ll hit it though.  When you’re using more  than one hook vertically you have to space them out for tangles and make sure they don’t twist up your line and tangle on itself.  That is enough of a mess to throw it all in the box and untangle it later.  Taking a turn with 3 hooks can also cause a similar tangle unless you go wide.  I’ve used an Alabama rig with 3 hooks and a couple hookless baits to mimic a school of fish and that seemed attractive.  The world is your oyster, whatever that means, within the regs  Hope  you slay.   

I've done this with success but with just a single 2oz jighead and swimbait with a trailer hook. Worked in both ocean and the bay. I'm sure there's different ways to troll it, but I do a slow troll with a a few twitches to get it off the floor every now and then.

Thanks for the insights, I think I might just give it a try!

no bc trolling in bay I run 16+oz of lead. if i put a jighead on it would add drag and basically be in the mud most of the time. its also in line with my bait im trolling, there is no way a halibut chooses to bite my 16oz swimbait dragging in the mud covered in grunk over my rolled bait 3ft behind it. best to fish 1 bait well over 2 poorly.

I have tried this before and had good success with it. I have called this my goldilocks rig. Three different size hooks and swim bait to give the fish choices.The one problem as one party sa is the tangles when trying to net and also getting the the unbitten hooks stuck in the fish when they get tangled up in the free hooks. So as the gentleman said, you just roll it up and untangle (or throw it away) it later. I think mostly you try it out and see if you like it, good luck, R.

I recently read about a strategy like this for striper, using a 2 or 3oz bucktail below a crankbait.  This could work for halibut too, you would just need to match your jighead weight to the conditions. 

The biggest hangup I would have here is that a 6 or 8 oz jighead would need a big swimbait also.  With a big swimbait, you run a risk of a halibut biting the tail off and not getting hooked. 

I think I would be more inclined to run a swimbait on a dropshot above the weight, below the three way swivel.  I might actually try this next time I fish saltwater.

Hey there Speedy, what I have done when I use a heavy jighead with a large swim bait is to add a assist hook by adding a split ring to the jighead, tie my leader knot to the split ring, then tie another knot to the jig head with  a short line and a hook which i attach to the tail with a rubber band and have caught a few of the fish that bite the tail. I guess the other problem I did not really mention in my above post is trying to keep the bottom lure off the bottom. I use this mostly when the bottom depth is pretty regular and not changing since there is no weight touching the bottom such as in ball bouncing or drop shot. I guess you just have to be flexible and have a few tricks in the basket and use them when appropriate, R.