Wacky worms have become one of the best baits to use for targeting bass. This is the easiest bait to use as you can literally just cast it out and do nothing as it falls down through the water column. Add some small twitches and pauses and you can fish the bait well can catch some very large smallmouth bass to go along with good numbers of them.
What Sizes are Best for Smallmouth Bass Fishing?
The smaller 4 inch wacky worms are perfect for smallmouth bass fishing. You can upsize to the 5 inch worms, like many anglers would use for largemouth bass, but you do not need to go bigger to target quality-sized smallmouth bass.
How to Rig Wacky Worms
Use an O-Ring (Wacky Style)
Using an O-ring is the easiest way to increase your ratio of fish caught per worm. One of the negatives of using wacky worms is that the bait comes off the hook very easy when you rig it wacky style. You can easily land 4 to 5 bass or even more per worm by adding an O-ring. Without an O-ring, it’s possible to lose a worm per bass, which can get costly.
Other Rigs
Anglers use a variety of rigs to fish these baits. A light weight jighead works great for smallmouth bass since they are usually found a little deeper than largemouth bass, but many anglers have a lot of success fishing wacky worms weightless as well. Other rigs do work well even though the action of the bait doesn’t appear to be as good on the other rigs.
Best Techniques
Fish it Weightless
Fish them with a twitch and pause retrieve and you are going to get a lot of bites as the worm falls through the water column. If you cast the bait into a good spot, you can literally just let it fall and do nothing and you will get bites. It is one of the easiest baits to catch smallmouth bass when these fish are in the shallows.
Use a Light Weight
Adding a little bit of weight to this bait will let you fish a little deeper and cover more water quicker while trying to fish down deeper. The weedless wacky jigheads are tough to beat, but a split shot rig can be effective too.
Skipping Wacky Worms
The skipping technique is an awesome way to get under overhanging trees, around wood and under docks, boat lifts and pontoon boats.
Go Vertical
From summer through fall, you can often find smallmouth bass in deeper water. You can fish wacky worms down deep with a vertical presentation and have good success if you find some of these deep water fish.
Dead Stick Them
Dead sticking can be productive if you can get on top of some of these suspended bass out in deeper water.
