Now wacky-rig a cigar and pitch it out there. With no other weight on the line, the worm falls as it should—horizontally, with the tapered ends twitching all the way down. Suddenly it stops and suspends, as it reaches the end of its tether under the float, but each wave lifts the worm and the process starts over. Calm days tend to require more manipulation on your part. Smallmouths can hit bobber-wacky cigars on the drop, on the pull, after the float is twitched in place by shaking the rod tip with a tight line, and after a variety of other triggers are applied. Playing with the bobber-wacky to develop new triggering moves is half the fun.

Any waves that won’t swamp the boat are fine. The bobber-wacky system actually produces better in 5-foot waves than it does on flat calm seas. Something about a wacky-rigged, suspended cigar seems to spell “helpless” to smallmouths. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the bait is pulled up by the middle when the rig rises, followed by a slow, fluttering, twitching drop, suggesting a supple but near-death baitfish caught in the roll of the waves. Strikes are aggressive—at times, too aggressive. After a couple bass swallow the hook, I often switch to a hardbait.

Size, Color Conundrums

When a 4-inch cigar fails to catch any bass, I often switch to a different style of plastic or a hardbait. But a few years ago I tried downsizing instead. Switching to a 3-inch YUM Dinger on 4-pound line produced one of the biggest smallmouths of the year. Downsizing often fails on the waters I fish, but when it works, does it ever.

Four-inch units prevail most days. A 5-inch cigar, by contrast, almost always catches smallmouth bass, even in cold water, but tends to produce the best numbers every day only on big bodies of water, like Lake Erie or Lake Michigan. Five-inchers produce best when smallmouths turn on and become extremely aggressive, but size can become a function of matching the hatch. Where smallmouths are accustomed to large chubs, shad, or gobies, 5-inch cigars excel.

In open water, laminated colors (dark on one side and white on the other) produce well. Solid, subdued colors (no metal flake) tend to attract more strikes in clear water. But last summer, smallmouths were buying green pumpkin. Next year it could be purple monkey puke with mustard flake, who knows? Black worked pretty well. Sometimes smoke with black flake. But green pumpkin was off the charts.

Could not catch them on watermelon. What’s up with that? How different is green pumpkin? A little more brownish, yeah, so what? Are bass supposed to be this picky? All summer? Last year they were.

Many cigar worms are stored in the tomb of forgotten plastics (my garage). I eventually unearthed every green-pumpkin version. I found Venom, Berkley, Kinami, Wave Worm, YUM, Case, and other brands in that hue. Out in the sunlight, one man’s green pumpkin looked like another man’s crud brown. Some looked just like watermelon. Some were opaque, others were translucent. Some were shiny, others dull. Some dark, others light. But they all had one thing in common.

It didn’t matter which green-pumpkin cigar worm hit the water, it was getting bit. Even the ones that looked just like watermelon. So I tried watermelon. Nothing. “Come on,” I howled at the fish gods, face to the heavens, fist clenched. “When did smallmouths start reading labels?”

The point isn’t color, however. Color preferences can change over time. The real story is the versatility and fish-catching ability of the cigar worm. The magic in a cigar worm is displayed in the way it vibrates: Subtle, almost imperceptible vibration is the primary calling card. If the object is to avoid bites, rig a cigar worm so that it can’t play that card.