Can soft plastic baits gain an even greater following? Some of the heightened popularity of plastics can be traced to Denny Brauer’s phenomenal 1998 campaign. The all-time money winner on the BASSMASTER tournament trail won both the 1998 BASS Masters Classic and the 1998 FLW Tour Angler of the Year primarily by flipping jigs and soft plastics. His Classic victory urged nearly every manufacturer of soft plastic to introduce versions of the larger flippin’ tube that Brauer used. Tubes are but the tip of a vast jello-like iceberg of soft plastics, however.
Some trendy designs are simply variations of traditional soft plastic baits. Some new versions show improvements over traditional designs. But others are imitative knockoffs designed to cash in on the soft plastics craze. Many novel styles and products merit consideration, however.
Trick Worms
The tag “trick worm,” sometimes called swimming worm, is appropriate for this versatile and fun-to-fish bait. Trick worms are less buoyant and more pliable than traditional floating worms. New designs, some supple hand-poured variations, have flooded the market. The standard design is a 6- to 7-inch or straight worm with an enlarged tail.
Unlike the predictable back-and-forth sachet of the stiffer jerkworm, the pliable trick worm has an unpredictable action when twitched or jerked. When bass hold shallow and seem tentative about striking a moving bait, the trick worm’s erratic action and slow fall produces strikes when other lures fail. Count on it in postspawn conditions or when cold fronts sour the prespawn bite.
The trick worm can be fished at the end of a Carolina rig, split-shot rig, or above a drop-shot presentation. But perhaps the most productive way to fish a trick worm is Texas-rigged on a 2/0 hook with no weight, about 10 inches behind a barrel swivel. Curling the worm up on the hook shank a bit gives it an incredibly erratic wiggle that puts the trick in your trick worm.
When faced with an extremely tough bite, try fishing the worm wacky-style, that’s with a 1/0 straight-shank hook inserted through the middle of the worm. Barely twitch it near stumps or brush, or dead-stick it in deeper pockets and channels. Another trick-worm trick is to insert a finishing nail or lead nail weight into the head to make the worm do a headstand.
Flippin’ Tubes
Following Brauer’s success, flippin’ tubes—or oversized gitzits—are raging hot from Lake Champlain to the Cal Delta. Of course, a few anglers have known for years the effectiveness of compact drop baits. But until recently, the oversized tubes have been a guarded secret.
Despite its appearance, or perhaps because of it, tubes can entice strikes from the most finicky predator. The gliding head of the bait imitates natural fish movements, and the lure’s trailing tentacles give an indication of something alive.
The preferred tube for flipping and pitching into cover is 4 to 5 inches long, with a solid head, hollow body and plenty of pliable tentacles. The solid plastic head makes Texas-rigging a tube easier. Many experts use Gambler’s Florida Rig weight when fishing a tube bait with a solid plastic head.
Others favor a traditional smaller tube and use weights that attach directly to the hook and ride inside the hollow body, like Eagle Claw’s Quik Clip weight, used in conjunction with their H-P Hook. In either case, too heavy a weight deadens the bite-enticing, spiraling fall of the tube and it drops like a rock.
