If you want one answer and no reading: buy the Eagle Claw Assorted UV Ice Jig Kit. It's $5.99, it's made in the USA, and it puts fifteen jigs in your box for less than the price of two premium tungsten singles. On a first-ice panfish trip, fifteen mediocre jigs you actually own beat two perfect ones you're afraid to lose in a rock pile.
Everything below is about what you buy after that.
A jig is the whole presentation in ice fishing. There's no casting, no retrieve, no cover to work — it's a small piece of weighted metal hanging in a column of water two feet from a fish that can see it perfectly. That strips the decision down to three things: how fast it drops, how big it looks, and whether the fish can find it. Those are the only questions this list tries to answer.
One thing up front, because it matters for how you read this: we have not fished all six of these. Every price, rating, size and spec below was read off the live Amazon listing on 2 September 2026, and the technique notes come from named sources we've linked. Where something is our opinion rather than a fact, it's written as an opinion.
The six, at a glance
| Jig | Price | Material | Count | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eagle Claw Assorted UV Kit | $5.99 | Lead, UV-coated | 15 | Starting out |
| VMC Tungsten Bullfly | $9.17 | Tungsten | Single | Finicky bluegill |
| Rapala Jigging Rap W2 | $10.64 | Metal, weighted | Single | Covering water fast |
| Reaction Tackle Tungsten Jigs | $12.98 | Tungsten | 6 per pack | Deep basins, glow |
| THKFISH 54-Piece Kit | $19.99 | Lead | 54 | Learning your lake |
| Kenders 36-Piece Tungsten Kit | $84.00 | Tungsten | 36 | Going all-in |
Tungsten or lead? Answer this before you spend anything
Tungsten is much denser than lead — Reaction Tackle's listing describes its jig bodies as 97% tungsten. Density is the whole argument. A tungsten jig carrying the same weight as a lead jig is physically smaller, so it drops faster and looks less like a mouthful. On a 20-foot basin where you're trying to get back down to a school before it moves off, that speed is real.
Lead costs about a third as much and catches an enormous number of fish every winter.
Here's the honest split, and it's a preference rather than a rule:
- Shallow water, under about 10 feet — lead. The drop speed advantage barely exists at that depth, and losing a $2.50 tungsten jig in the rocks stings in a way losing a $0.40 lead jig doesn't.
- Deep basin, 15 feet and down — tungsten. You'll spend less of the day watching a jig sink.
- Learning a new lake — lead, in bulk. See the THKFISH kit below.
Sizing by depth is simpler than the tackle wall suggests. For crappie, bluegill and perch, most anglers work in the 1/64 oz to 1/16 oz range: 1/64 oz up shallow and for fussy fish, 1/32 oz as the everyday size, 1/16 oz when you're deep or fighting wind on the line. The tungsten jigs below cover that range; the Reaction Tackle jigs are sized in millimeters (3 mm to 7 mm) instead of ounces, so match them to the same depth logic by going smaller up shallow.
Color, and how much it actually matters
Color is where ice fishing advice gets least rigorous, so here's the version we're comfortable defending:
- Clear water, bright day — natural and subtle. Silver, black, plain tungsten.
- Stained water or heavy snow cover — glow and UV. This is the situation the Eagle Claw kit's UV coating and the glow finishes on the VMC and THKFISH jigs are for.
- Dawn, dusk, and late-day under ice — glow, recharged often. A glow finish rated for fifteen minutes is a finish you need to put a light on regularly, not once at the truck.
Beyond that, our honest opinion is that size and drop speed matter more than color for panfish, and that anglers who move between two or three colors confidently outfish anglers who agonize over twelve.
What we'd actually buy first
If you're new: the Eagle Claw kit at $5.99 plus the THKFISH 54-piece box at $19.99. Twenty-six dollars, sixty-nine jigs, and a full season of finding out what your water wants.
If you already ice fish and want one jig that earns its keep: the Reaction Tackle tungsten jigs. They're the highest rated here, and six to a pack means you can fish them hard in the rocks without flinching.
If you're deciding between tungsten and lead and don't want to think about it — fish lead shallow, fish tungsten deep, and spend the difference on more time on the ice.
Heading out for other species this winter? Our crappie gear guide and walleye tackle picks cover the open-water side of the same lakes.
