Swimming a worm for bass can be a great way to entice stubborn bass to bite and still cover water effectively.
Watch this video where I catch a few on the “speed worm” fishing in thick cover over duckweed.
In this video, it was a very visual bite. I had to pay close attention to the blow-ups and then leave slack in my line to let the bass get the worm. In this case, I was swimming a Rage Worm and the bass were all under the duckweed and not in open water.
This is not the only way to swim a worm and a lot of times fishing it in sparse cover or open water close to grass is a great way to catch bass.
The Swimming Worm Setup
The setup can vary, as I discussed in my video, but this is the general setup.
I typically use a 6″ Zoom Speed Worm or a 6″ Strike King Rage Tail Worm. I will list the components below. I rig this on a 3/0 – 5/0 EWG hook and typically peg the weight with a bobber stopper if I do use weight.
A lot of the time I fish this rig weightless, but if I do add weight I will fish anywhere from a 1/16 ounce worm weight to a 1/4, but rarely do I go that heavy. If I were to pick one weight it would probably be an 1/8 ounce.
Get Your Swimming Worm Components:
Owner 3/0 EWG Hooks Or Twist Lock EWG Hooks
In the video above I mentioned swimming little curly tail worms for really pressured or finicky bass, but in this video I used baitcasting gear with a 7:2 gear ratio reel and 15 pound-test fluorocarbon line on a 7″2″ medium-heavy casting rod. Anything around that will get you started with this technique.
Backstory to my experience swimming a worm
I remember when I came upon this technique by accident as a teenager up in Idaho. We had a lake by our house that was a lot like the one that I was fishing in the video above. I had a lot of grass and duckweed.
One day I was fishing a Texas rigged curly tail worm, but just kept getting bogged down in the junk fishing it the traditional way and so I decided to take off the weight and swim it back above the weeds. It was game on and I had one of the best days of fishing in my life up to that point in time.
Since that day, swimming a worm for bass has expanded and I have honed the skill and adapted to other worms and conditions, but I still love this technique for finicky bass.
Stay posted for other posts on this topic as I have a lot more to offer here and more setups and ideas that have branched off of this tactic.
I hope this helps you in your fishing adventures. Feel free to reach out to me on social media or comment below if you have any questions or to share your story about swimming a worm for bass.
To your fishing success,
Jonathan Burke
LiveBassFishing.com