(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Jake Whitaker, the 2018 Bassmaster Elite Series Rookie of the Year, qualified for three straight Bassmaster Classics thanks to his versatility. But when the going is tough, his favorite way to turn is to a weightless soft plastic.
“Weightless is the most natural presentation, the most natural approach to bass fishing that there is,” he said. He believes that unweighted plastics will not only catch more fish, but bigger fish, especially under calm conditions. He starts with them right before the bass move up to bed, stays with them into the post-spawn, and never puts them away if there is grass in the vicinity or docks to be fished.
One option that he likes is the traditional but often-overlooked “floating worm.” He takes a Big Bite 6-inch or 8-inch straight-tailed finesse worm and fishes it around shallow targets in the spring. He rigs the worm, which is often a gaudy color like merthiolate, school bus yellow, or bright pink, on a 2/0 or 3/0 EWG hook. “I will add a little barrel swivel about a foot above the hook,” he said, and then fish it around all of the shallow transition areas utilized by bass getting ready to spawn. The cover he likes includes laydowns, emergent vegetation, stumps, rocks and docks.
He fishes it on a 7-foot ALX medium-action spinning rod paired with a 30-sized Abu-Garcia Revo spinning reel. He uses a main line of 15-pound P-Line braid to which he adds a leader of 10-pound P-Line Tactical fluorocarbon. The proper presentation starts with a “super long cast,” then he counts it down two or three seconds and proceeds with a series of subtle twitches. If you’re ripping it like a jerkbait, you’re fishing it too hard. “Make that finesse worm dance.”
One key is to rig the worm slightly crooked so that when you twitch it, it darts off in unpredictable ways.
He also utilizes a weightless soft stickbait extensively. In thick grass or lily pads, he’s likely to rig it Texas-style, but whenever possible he prefers a wacky rig, which he throws “anywhere up shallow where there could be a bass,” although he tends not to use it in dirty water. He doesn’t soak it, though. His preferred style is more like fishing a moving bait, with the trolling motor on high, picking out key targets. He’ll let the bait sink for four or five seconds, hop it twice, let it sink for a few more seconds and then move onto the next target.
He also likes the wacky rig for bedding fish, and especially for fry-guarders. He does caution that bass guarding fry often won’t bite on the first cast. You have to find the sweet spot, the one place they don’t want the lure, just as you would with a bedding bass, and hit it repeatedly until they commit. If they spook, let the fry regather and come back shortly thereafter for another shot.
Around docks, and particularly floating docks, he said that a weightless lure has advantages over any other offering. When big females are suspended under the black floats of a floating dock, a jig or weighted Texas rig will fly right by them. The wacky rig, on the other hand, stays in the strike zone much longer.
“I love dock fishing any time of the year, especially for wacky-rigging,” he said.
If you want to learn some other information about how Whitaker employs wacky-rigged plastics, including his favorite stickbait colors and the hook that he feels best combines weedlessness with hookup percentages, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
