For years and years, the floating worm has been one of my favorites for bass fishing.
Here’s a recent video of me catching a nice bass on the floating worm.
In this case, it was one of my favorites when I really need to be finesse. The Strike King KVD Baby Fat Finesse worm is one of my all-time favorites for this method. It is right up there with the Zoom Trick Worm for the floating worm rig.
How to Rig the Floating Worm for Bass Fishing
I rig the floating worm on a round bend worm hook or an EWG hook, and Texas rig it without the weight.
I see many people rig it crooked and that can work, but I rig it in as straight as possible. If you do rig it crooked put a swivel up the line with some leader so that you don’t get your line too twisted up.
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How to Fish the Floating Worm for Bass
I like to fish this rig around some type of cover most of the time. In the case of the video above I was casting it at the point of some reeds where the bass were hanging out waiting to move up and stage for the spawn.
Later on in the video, I fished it over some shallow rip rap on the dam.
In either case, I was in shallow water and let it sink slowly with twitches and pauses, kinda like fishing a fluke or a jerkbait.
Depending on how deep the water is and how aggressive the bass are, I fish this bait super fast in shallow flats when they are chasing, or super slow like a Senko-style bait around heavy cover.
The heavy cover for fishing a floating worm can be an ambush point along a laydown or in submerged bushes and trees. It can also be on the outside or inside weed edges.
The fall on this rig can be really effective at triggering sluggish bass to bite, but the erratic twitching action can be key to enticing a reaction bite. You can see both of these presentations in the video above.
The Gear I Use for the Floating Worm
You can fish this worm on spinning or casting gear. I lean towards casting gear, but spinning gear works fine.
The pro’s of spinning gear is that you can typically cast these baits a little further, but they also tend to have some line twist issues.
With casting gear, I seem to have a little power and can use heavier line to get them out of the cover. You also have less line twist issues, but may have the occasional backlash.
I have caught countless bass on both as I started fishing this rig with spinning gear.
As of late, I have been using my BFS Gear to fish this rig for lighter applications and long casts for smallmouth bass fishing. Check out my BFS Fishing Post.
The casting gear that I like for fishing the floating worm.
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On my spinning setups, I will fish braid to a leader for casting distance and to prevent line twist.
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Wrapping up the Straight Tail Weightless Worm
If you are new to fishing, this can be a super easy way to catch bass, especially as the water begins to warm through the spring and into summer.
The cool think is that it is super simple. Just cast it out, let it sink to depth, and give it short twitches and pauses. Pay attention to when you get your bites and do more of that.
To your fishing success,
Jonathan Burke
LiveBassFishing.com