Walk into almost any tackle shop in America and you’ll find a wall of jigheads. Round heads. Swimbait heads. Ned heads. Hover heads. Weedless heads. Heavy heads. Light heads.
So when we started developing our own jigheads at Ebb N Flow Outdoors, the goal wasn’t simply to make another jighead. The question was: what could we actually make better?
That question eventually became an entire family of products. And, thanks to my wife, it also became the name.
Where Did the Name “The Upgrade” Come From?
Interestingly, I can’t take credit for it. My wife, Emily, came up with the name.
When I started working through the original jighead design, I kept talking about all the little things I wanted to change. A better bait keeper. A stronger hook. More versatility. A head design that could handle different techniques instead of forcing an angler into one specific presentation.
I was probably doing what I tend to do — turning a relatively simple idea into a long explanation. Emily simplified it.
“So basically, it’s an upgrade.”
That was it. The Upgrade. The more we said it, the more it fit.
Because we weren’t trying to reinvent the jighead. Jigheads have been catching fish for generations. We were trying to look at a piece of terminal tackle anglers already use and ask: how can we make it more useful?
That became the foundation of The Upgrade.
The First Upgrade Wasn’t About Reinventing Fishing
One of the things I’ve learned from spending my career in the fishing industry is that innovation doesn’t always have to mean creating something anglers have never seen before. Sometimes innovation means fixing the little things.
Anyone who fishes soft plastics regularly knows the frustrations.
Baits sliding down the hook.
Plastics tearing.
Hooks that aren’t strong enough for the fish or tackle being used.
Buying different jigheads for slightly different presentations.
Wanting to add bucktail, flash or another material but not having a good place to tie it.
And more recently, trying to rig modern TPE and ElaZtech-style plastics on jigheads and keepers that weren’t necessarily designed around those materials.
None of these problems individually seem revolutionary. But solve enough of them on one piece of terminal tackle and you start creating something meaningfully different. That’s what we wanted The Upgrade to be.
Why the Upgrade Multi-Purpose Jighead Is Different
The original Upgrade Multi-Purpose Jighead was built around versatility. Rather than designing a jighead around one species or one technique, we wanted anglers to be able to change what the jighead could do by changing what they put on it.
Soft plastic swimbait? Absolutely.
Shrimp imitation? Yep.
Straight-tail bait? Yep.
Bucktail? Tie it directly onto the head.
Hybrid bucktail and soft plastic presentation? That’s where things start getting interesting.
The design incorporates features like our tapered nose, belly-weight bait keeper and bucktail flange while using strong Mustad hooks.
The goal wasn’t to tell anglers exactly how to fish it. It was almost the opposite. We wanted to give anglers a platform and let them decide what to do with it. That’s why we called it Multi-Purpose.
Then “The Upgrade” Became Bigger Than One Jighead
This is where the name really started to make sense. As we developed additional products, I realized we were following the same philosophy every time.
We weren’t just asking: can we make a hover hook? We were asking: what would we change about a hover hook?
That thinking helped lead to the Upgrade Hover Hook, which uses a belly-weighted design intended to work particularly well with modern soft plastics, including TPE-style baits.
Then came another question. What happens when you want that style of presentation around grass, wood, docks and other cover? That helped lead to the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Hover Hook.
And then: what if we took that same weedless philosophy and gave anglers additional weight options and applications? That helped lead to the Upgrade A.T.V. Weedless Swing Head.
Suddenly, The Upgrade wasn’t one product anymore. It was becoming a family of terminal tackle.
What Does “The Upgrade” Mean Today?
What started as a name Emily came up with has become something of a standard inside Ebb N Flow Outdoors. Putting The Upgrade on a package creates an obligation.
If we’re going to ask an angler to replace something already sitting in their tackle box, there needs to be a reason.
Maybe it’s stronger.
Maybe it holds the bait differently.
Maybe it gives you another presentation.
Maybe it works better with newer soft-plastic materials.
Maybe it allows one jighead to accomplish jobs that previously required several.
Whatever the reason: different isn’t enough. It needs to provide an actual benefit on the water. That’s what The Upgrade means to us now.
Built From Fishing, Not a Boardroom
There’s another important part of this story. Ebb N Flow Outdoors didn’t start because somebody identified “terminal tackle” as an attractive product category on a spreadsheet.
I’m an angler. I’m also a licensed U.S. Coast Guard captain, studied fisheries biology and natural-resource management, and spent years working professionally inside the fishing and outdoor industries.
But even with that background, some of the most important product development still happens the simplest way possible:
Go fishing.
Rig something.
Break something.
Lose a bait.
Catch a fish.
Miss a fish.
Notice something that annoys you.
Come home and figure out whether there’s a better way to do it.
Then go back out and try again.
That cycle has influenced virtually everything we’re building. And I hope it always does.
Why Build an Entire Family Instead of One Jighead?
Because fishing isn’t one-dimensional. The same angler might be throwing a lightweight presentation for spotted bass one weekend and chasing redfish the next. They might fish a hover-style presentation over open water, then need something weedless around grass. They might throw a small plastic on forward-facing sonar and later rig a larger swimbait in current.
Freshwater and saltwater aren’t nearly as separated as the fishing industry sometimes makes them seem. A good piece of terminal tackle can cross those boundaries.
That’s the direction we’re taking The Upgrade family. Not dozens of products just to fill pegs. Purpose-built products that solve specific problems while remaining versatile enough to do more than one job.
So, Is The Upgrade Actually an Upgrade?
Ultimately, that’s not for me to decide. It’s for the angler.
I can explain why we designed the keeper a certain way. I can explain why we chose a particular Mustad hook. I can explain why the weight sits where it does. I can explain the prototypes, changes, mistakes and testing that happened before a product ever reached the package.
But once you tie it onto your line, none of that matters. It either works for you or it doesn’t.
That’s one reason customer feedback has become such an important part of building Ebb N Flow Outdoors. When somebody finds a completely different way to use one of our products, I want to hear about it. When something doesn’t work, I want to hear that too.
Because The Upgrade shouldn’t ever really be finished. There should always be another question. Another problem. Another idea. Another way to make something just a little better.
And sometimes, apparently, all it takes is your wife listening to you ramble about jigheads and saying: “So basically, it’s an upgrade.”
Turns out she was right.
Keep Communicating.
— Dave Erdly
Founder, Ebb N Flow Outdoors