Soft Stick Baits are probably the most effective saturation bait or non-reaction bait an angler can throw. It’s also in my opinion the single best throw back or follow up bait ever made and works great as a follow up bait in all but the muddiest waters. The bait is thought of as nearly magical due to its uncanny ability too elicit bites from highly pressured fish that seemingly have lock jaw. The “magic” is actually quite simple and to understand it you have to look back to its history.

The very first plastic worms were made in Akron Ohio by the Creme brothers in 1949. These first worms were made of vinyl and were made from a mold that had been crated using a real night crawler. The way these first worms were rigged was with a lead head jig with no weed guard. These baits were great and changed history, but they still had flaws.

The main problem was the open hook which was prone to snagging and especially in the shallow muddy waters of the south-east. At this point Southern bass guys began to make their own worms, most notably Tom Mann and his jelly worms. These baits were softer and they had highly active curly tails that kicked as they fell.

These same guys came up with a way to fish these baits that would allow them to put the bait where the fish quite often are, heavy cover. They took lead bullets and drilled a hole through the center allowing them to thread the sinker onto the line and then tie it to a long shank wire hook which could be rigged such a way as to bury the hook point making it weedless. They called it the Texas rig. For 25-30 years this was “it” for worm fishing and caught more bass than any other bait around at the time.

Now for us here in the west we have to deal with more pressure than the south east as we don’t have anywhere near as many lakes and the lakes we do have are crystal clear and very deep. Because of this the initial success of the Texas rigged worms has not continued as much as in the south east. The fish just weren’t feeling this bait after a while. The main problem was that the fish became conditioned to avoid stuff that falls straight down and tails that are too active, i.e. Action Tails.

Gary Yamamoto was the first to crack this conditioning dynamic when, inspired by the shape of his ball point pen, he solved the issue of vertical fall by replacing the lead casting weight with a quantity of salt that was heavy enough to take the bullets place and because unlike lead weights, with sale he was able to spread the weight out across the length of the bait. This solves the vertical fall issue as it makes the bait fall horizontally. As far as crazy tails soft stick baits, whether Senkos, Big Bite, or Aces, all have subtly tapered tails that wag.

Here are my favorite ways to rig these “magic” baits: