Deadstick — Don’t waste time with this presentation when less tedious presentations draw consistent action. But when they’re not, be sure to give fish a no-motion alternative. Use it in high-percentage spots, like when you’re about to get snagged. Operate on the assumption that when your lure’s in trouble, it’s probably close to a bass. Experiment with a variety of degrees of lure motion to try to entice that fish you know is watching the bait.

Use a skirt on a pegged Texas rig to build a more weedless spider lure Slip a thinned-out silicone skirt on the line behind the slip sinker. Then peg the sinker to the line with a toothpick, and slide it down to the head of the worm or grub. This rig works even better with Lunker City’s Lunker Grip Sinker. The skirt slides onto the insert that pegs the weight to the nose of the soft lure, creating a spider-jig like creation that can be fished on the heaviest tackle, in places where you’d hesitate to toss a relatively expensive jighead-spider-double tail combination. Gopher Tackle began this rigging rage with their Worm Dancer, which combined a living rubber skirt and bullet weight.

The tougher the fishing, the less visible your lure should be—Soft plastics aren’t attractor lures. They rely on you to put them near the fish. The spookier and more finicky the fish, the more natural your presentation must be in order to trigger more than the odd suicidal bass. In most cases, that means using a lure that doesn’t stand out from the background. The things bass eat spend their lives trying not to be noticed. By emulating that behavior and appearance, your lure becomes more natural and increases the likelihood of generating a response from a finicky bass. When the fish won’t come out to grab more visible colors, try a lure that blends into the background and fish it slow enough and close enough to the fish to be noticed. Go with green in weeds, brown or pumpkin over sand, and black or smoke around timber or rocks. For fishing above the bottom, try clear or lightly tinted pearls that appear almost invisible.

Wacky Worms, also called "nail rigging," this style of rigging, with a weight (a nail or lead insert weight) in the nose of the worm and a hook impaled toward its middle, may seem "amateurish" to the general bass fishing public. But an increasing number of anglers are discovering how effective it can be when teasing fish into reacting while working the lure almost in one spot. Others say it’s even better when worked up-tempo, especially with a slender-tailed soft lure.   Don’t be surprised to see the "wacky rig" overcome its amateurish stigma to become a bass fishing staple. In the right conditions, it outproduces any other style of rigging.

The better the bite, the less natural your lure should be—When bass are active and aggressive, they more likely strike anything they see. For the most part, their feeding is more inclusive than exclusive. If it moves, it must be food, until proven otherwise. Now’s the time to let ‘em see it, with a little flash, bright hues, and color combinations strong in contrast. Two worms can be better than one—Slip a second worm onto the shank of the hook of a Texas rig. Especially with swimming-tail-style worms, this extra bulk and commotion sometimes increases its appeal to bass. Experiment with color and shapes, too. Adding a four-inch chartreuse complement to a black plastic lizard, for instance, or a wiggle tail grub appended to a big straight-bodied worm. A pair of identical grubs rigged on the same hook may be a superior substitute for a twin-tailed grub. This works best with hooks that have a separate keeper for the nose of the worm, like the Mister Twister Keeper Hook or Mustad Power Lock.