A Watermelon Magic SpringR Worm.
July 02, 2020
By Ned Kehde
When we recently talked to Frank Oekerich Jr, who is president of Mann’s Bait Company in Eufaula, Alabama, he was delighted to enlighten us about the manifold attributes of the new SpringR Worm.
In addition, he told us that it is catching the fancy of scores of black-bass anglers and their quarries all across the United States.
They are manufactured in two sizes. One is six inches long. The other one is four inches long.
We told him that we would like to publish a gear guide about them, and he graciously sent us eight of them to work with and thoroughly examine.
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Because most Midwest finesse anglers are enamored with four-inch soft-plastic worms, we elected to focus on the four-inch SpringR Worm.
Here is what we discovered about it.
According to our measurements, it is exactly 4 5/8 inches long.
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Midwest finesse anglers will describe it as a stick-style bait.
The anterior, posterior, dorsal, and ventral sections are identical. And their epidermises are smooth.
It is cylinder shaped, and each end is relatively flat, but both ends are endowed with a slight indentation.
It possesses a width of five-sixteenths of an inch and a circumference of fifteen-sixteenths of an inch.
Some anglers are heralding it as being a mind-boggling and state-of-the-art soft-plastic worm.
One of the mind-boggling elements about the SpringR Worm stems from the fact that its entire torso encases a coil spring. And the coil spring generates a surprising variety of alluring and novel gyrations, twitches, and undulations.
It was designed primarily for wacky-rig applications. But in addition to wacky rigging it, Midwest finesse anglers can affix a small mushroom-style jig with an exposed hook to either end of the SpringR Worm. The hook and bait keeper of the jig become embedded inside the soft-plastic torso and the coil spring, and when the point and bend of the hook emerges from the core of the torso, the hook will be affixed between two of the coils of the spring.
It is available in the following hues: Black Blue Metal Flake, Bubblegum, Clear Chartreuse Silver, Green Pumpkin, Green Pumpkin Candy, June Bug, Methiolate, Pearl Silver Metal Flake, Plum Apple, Shrimp, Watermelon Magic, and Watermelon Red Metal Flake.
It is not impregnated with scent nor salt, and because of the coil spring, it is not buoyant.
Besides generating an array of unique movements and twitches, the coil spring enhances the durability of the SpringR Worm.
In essence, the SpringR Worm is a simple creature, and since the advent of Midwest finesse fishing in the 1950s and 1960s, simplicity has played an integral role in the way we fish day in and day out. Thus, it is not surprising that it has been catching the eyes of a growing number of Midwest finesse anglers.
A package of four costs $8.99.
Endnotes Here is the link to Mann’s Bait Company’s website: https://www.mannsbait.com/shop/SpringR-c50338780 . Here is a YouTube video featuring Paul Elias of Laurel, Mississippi, demonstrating some of the virtues of the SpringR Worm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fYpLRkwtq8&feature=emb_title . Midwest finesse anglers will employ the four-inch SpringR Worm with a small mushroom-style jig, such as a 1/64-, 1/32-, 1/16-, and 3/32-ounce jig. The size of the hook will also be small, ranging in size from a number four to a number two. They will present their SpringR Worm rig to the largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, and spotted bass by employing all six of the standard Midwest finesse presentations or slight variations of those retrieves. Here is a link to a Midwest Finesse column that explains how to employ those six retrieves: https://www.in-fisherman.com/editorial/six-midwest-finesse-retrieves/153946 .