We obsessed bass anglers tend to give bass and their pea-sized brains way too much credit for thinking and general knowledge of their environment. We try to “match the hatch” and say that we want our lures to look as natural as possible. Yet we don’t hesitate to bait a drop-shot rig with a skinny, 4 1/2-inch Roboworm in the pink with blue streak Morning Dawn pattern, dabbing the tail with a bit of chartreuse Spike-It.

A bass would never see this crazy-looking thing naturally occurring in its world, yet this particular lure can absolutely crush fish. The Roboworm is just one example of plastic worms that work throughout the open-water season, while not looking like any kind of a natural critter that a bass would normally encounter. Let’s look at some others while suggesting the use of a Texas-rigged, soft plastic lure setup that you might have never considered.

The first bass I ever saw caught on a plastic worm happened one hot, summer afternoon around 60 years ago on southern Michigan’s Corey Lake. My Gramps had just read a groundbreaking story in one of the “Big Three” outdoor magazines (Field & Stream, Outdoor Life or Sports Afield) about how bass could be caught during the day on a pre-rigged, three-hook “rubber” worm. He showed me the magazine story, illustrated with a drawing that showed how to put two split shot a foot or so in front of the worm, which was attached to your fishing line with a snap swivel to avert line twist. It told how you wanted to throw this worm over the tops of submerged weed beds and let the sinker barely “tick” the green stuff. And it showed the worm floating up above the weeds—which it certainly never really would do—as it followed along on the same horizontal plane as the sinkers.

This tactic might seem quaint in today’s bass world, but back in the 1960s, it was revolutionary. For one, bass anglers in the northern states all pretty much believed that bass only fed from dusk until dawn on an Arbogast Jitterbug, white with a red head, or a Heddon Crazy Crawler in the same color pattern. Bass weren’t supposed to bite during the day.

So, educated by the magazine article, Gramps and I loaded a couple of push-button spincast rigs and one baitcaster into his old gray steel boat, fired up the 5 1/2-horsepower Evinrude and set out for a big weed flat close to deep water. We anchored on the deep side, not far from a couple of other boats with panfish anglers watching bobbers dangling from cane poles.

We started casting the worms over the weeds—and caught some bass!

I think we only caught three largemouths, all slightly longer than the 10-inch size limit, with all clamped to a metal stringer to become breakfast the next day. Limited success aside, that was a life-changing event. I spent most of the rest of my time on the water that summer, and pretty much the rest of my youth, slinging a three-hook worm at different weed patches around Corey Lake, almost always catching a few 10-inch keepers and the occasional lunker, 12-inch fish.

Those pre-rigged worms still work. Two years ago, fishing his first-ever kayak tournament, Chris Cicchelli of Kalamazoo took third place with a Kelly’s Striper three-hook worm in purple with white stripes. He’s now a regular in our local kayak series and always has one tied on, using a wire leader for weight. My buddy Jeff Gilliland of Byron Center is another believer in the pre-rigged worms, favoring a Kelly’s Plow Jockey. He adds a small, sliding bullet weight ahead of the swivel tied into his main line.

If you think about it, a bass never sees anything like these lures. Sure, the occasional live nightcrawler might get washed into the lake during a rainstorm, but it’s not going to be swimming and twisting through the water like these pre-tied worms do. If you crawled a three-hook worm on the bottom like a nightcrawler would move before it drowned, you’d catch way more weeds and bottom gunk than fish. But, like the pink Roboworm, these worms simply get bit when cast and reeled slow and steady.

A step up from the pre-rigged worm is a straight 4-inch Zoom Finesse worm. It’s an improvement because the worm is rigged to be weedless, Texas-style, to easily come through weeds. I almost always have one rigged with a 1/16-ounce, pegged tungsten bullet weight 18 inches ahead of the bait—a modernized spit-shot rig. This worm, usually in the Green Pumpkin color or Green Pumpkin/Blue Flash colors, catches bass from spring through fall. Like the other two worms, bass don’t see anything natural that looks like a 4-inch Zoom worm, yet they eat it up.

Stick worms—Yamamoto Senkos and their many imitators—are now a part of most bass anglers’ repertoires. Anglers hook ‘em in the middle to create a wacky rig or Texas-rig them weightless and swim them. Or they add a bullet sinker and bump it along bottom. Again, nothing naturally born into a bass’s world looks like these.

Several years ago, I read an interview with Larry Nixon, one of the true tournament warriors of days gone by. Larry is known for his prowess with plastic worms, and in the article, he suggested a different soft plastic that just makes sense. Instead of Texas-rigging a worm, Larry recommended Texas-rigging a baitfish imitator such as a Zoom Fluke. Add a bullet sinker and bump it along bottom. This resonated with me, since bass are much more likely to see and dine on baitfish than they are on worms.

Soon after I read that, I Texas-rigged a Fluke and, pitching it around shallow wood, started catching bass on Kentucky Lake while pre-fishing for a kayak tournament. Since then, I’ve tried some other fish-shaped soft plastics. The 6th Sense brand Juggle Minnow caught fish regularly the last two seasons. A 2/0 Gamakatsu EWG hook fits this lure well. Since this lure is usually employed into beds of weeds, I peg the sinker, using usually just a 1/8-ounce tungsten sinker from Motley Fishing (motleyfishing.com). This keeps the little bullet weight right at the nose of the lure, which helps it come through weeds more effectively.

Worms, overall, have fallen out of fashion for many bass anglers, but there is no doubt they still can catch lots of fish, even though they might not match anything a fish regularly finds for dinner. Although they don’t look like anything a bass has eaten before, they still apparently look delicious and nutritious to a bass’s pea-sized brain.

For more fishing insight from the pros who know, check out the next issue of MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.