Why This Worm Gets Bit All Spring Long (Pre, Spawn, Post)

Hey guys, Bassmaster Elite Series pro Drew Benton here with bassresource.com and they asked me to talk about worms and more particularly in the springtime. What is my worm of choice? How do I fish it? What am I looking for? What am I doing?

You know, spring of the year for me, I'm shallow. I'm up there looking for bedding fish. I'm looking for cruisers that are pre-spawn. I'm in that zone where pre-spawners are up around docks. They're fixing to spawn. Or maybe post-spawners are just off, you know, right where they have made a bed and they're on a laydown. Or maybe they're just recuperating or maybe they're guarding fry. A lot of things are happening around the spawn. People think, well the spawn happens and it's over. No, a spawn is two, three, sometimes four months down here in the South where I'm from. And you take advantage of that with this bait that I'm fixing to show you. And you can catch all those fish in every stage of the spawn with this one bait.

And that's what I love about it so much. That's the reason why it's in my hand on my deck when I'm up actually sight fishing. Most of the time it's still on my deck and in my hand. And that's the wacky worm. This one in particular is a SPRO prototype that Drew Cook and I have developed. You know, we're working with SPRO to develop a line of soft plastics and this one right here is packed full of salt.

Again, we're going to wacky rig it with a little O-ring keeper on there. That's a Stinger #1 Gamakatsu hook with a nano coat technology on there. So it's really mute, really flat. It doesn't shine. It's not flashy. I throw this on the new PEX braid from Seaguar. It's super small diameter. I can throw 16–18 LB test and it's like 10 LB test diameter to a 10 LB InvizX fluorocarbon leader. I love this line. I love this setup.

And my whole key with this, keeping it in my hand while I'm looking, is if I see a cruiser up there, I can ease this bait up to him in front of him. Get him to bite. If I see a fry guarder, I can get him to bite a lot of times very easy. But another thing that a lot of people don't think of—if you see a fish on bed from a long distance and you throw this up there to him, a lot of times you can get that fish to bite super fast. So I'm not wasting time putting my Power Poles down, actually working that fish into biting. A lot of times they'll bite something subtle like a wacky rig floating down on their bed. They'll just come up there and suck it in right away, and you don't have to spend a lot of time working it.

The other thing is all these pre-spawners that are moving in and out of these places like all these docks? I can skip it up under dock cables, up under these walkways, on the backside of docks. If we're on, you know, a place that has, you know, docks that are connected to the bottom with posts, it skips really well. Those fish really love to set up on those things before they move into pockets to spawn. And this is just a bait that you can target those fish—spawning fish and post-spawn fish—all in one setup. And it's so effective.

I mean, I've watched these fish look at this thing, how it floats or how it sinks down. This one in particular, with these little ball ends, it kind of falls like this, if that makes sense. And it's very enticing—those fish seeing it sink down in the water column. They'll come up and you can—it's actually got scent baked into it. So it's got every aspect you want in a soft plastic. They'll come up and put their nose on it and it's like everything's working against them and they can't resist it. They just open up their mouth, suck it in, and you got them.

This hook right here, this Stinger hook, is phenomenal. I never lose a fish whenever I have them hooked on this. It gets them very deep back in the throat whenever they take this bait in because of that long shank. It's got a great barb to it. And again, you cannot go wrong with this setup. No matter what soft plastic worm you want to wacky rig—whether it be Senko style bait, some guys, even Neko—they'll put a finesse worm on here, put a nail weight in it.

But for me, being able to skip it—that Neko doesn't do that. That's the reason why I go with this weightless wacky worm. And again, it's the best setup for the springtime when you're up shallow and you got fish in all stages of the spawn.