found will work in any lake, in any condition. The size and color can change from morning to afternoon; so I always have a good supply of many colors and sizes.”
Here’s a look at the various options for soft plastic stick baits:
WEIGHTLESS TEXAS-RIGGED
Probably the most diverse method for fishing soft stickbaits, this one excels for pitching to bed fish, probing laydowns or skipping under docks. Greenblatt said the soft stickbait’s inherent, undulating action really rings the dinner bell for bass.
“The Senko when rigged weightless is almost too much for bass,” he said. “The slow fall with the slight, side-to-side, wiggle drives even the most sluggish bass wild.”
What’s great about this tactic is that you can instantly switch from a surface presentation, to subsurface, to dead sticking by simply adjusting your retrieve speed. Most soft stick worms are dense enough to reach bottom on their own in shallow water of about six feet or less. However, when retrieved at a moderate speed with a high rod tip and frequent twitches, the bait will remain at the surface. With upward rod strokes, you can emulate the nose-up walking action of a topwater plug; but if a fish boils or strikes and misses, killing the bait makes it fall like wounded prey. Resume the action subsurface and a stickbait now works the mid-depths.
Greenblatt fishes his Texas-rigged stickbaits on 15-pound Seaguar fluorocarbon, which he says improves
ISSUE 1 February 2012
his casting distance. “When casting a weightless stickbait, it doesn’t weigh very much and Seaguar line allows me to get the max distance with such a light weight. The low stretch of fluorocarbon is also important. If, by chance, you have slack in the line when setting the hook (i.e. the fish move towards you or the line is over a stump or hung in grass) the line will make up for this and the hook will still penetrate.”
Like the adrenalin rush of a sudden impact? Then
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