"In clear, cold water, sickletail worms are the best plastic option I've seen," Dawidiuk said after the Sturgeon Bay affair last year, where he also guides for smallmouth bass. "You proved it to me. I've been working with it since, and rigging is critical. But, with the right rod, reel, and line, my clients can cast these things for miles and catch smallmouths they wouldn't otherwise catch with a tube or a grub."

SWIMMIN'

The idea of swimming a plastic bait is old, but even old dogs get new ticks. A worm is, perhaps, at its best for smallmouths when brought back on a straight retrieve--no lift-drop of the rod tip, no speeding up, no slowing down, no drop, and no rise, just a straight, horizontal retrieve.

The trigger is in the action of the tail and the mesmerizing slow-and-steady progress of the bait through the water. Often as not, especially during spring and summer, smallmouths seem to gauge their chances of actually capturing prey by approaching it slowly and watching for a reaction. If they get really close and their target doesn't spook, chances are they'll bite--that's if the bait looks, smells, and performs just right.

The right size, color, and action is critical with smallmouths. Smallmouth bass, as I mentioned, seem not to be worm-oriented in most environments when traditional tactics are employed. But the uncanny thing about worms is how well they imitate minnows. In minnow-imitating colors like smoke, smoke with metal flake, smoke with black flake, green smoke, white, salt-and-pepper, clear-blue, natural shad, amber with black flake, or any of a wide number of related shades, a swimming worm becomes a perfect minnow imitation.

The effectiveness of the worm at imitating minnows can be compared with certain streamers in your fly-fishing arsenal. A classic woolly bugger, for example, looks nothing like a minnow lying there in the fly box, with it's chenille body and bushy marabou tail. Put it in the water, however, and nothing looks more like a minnow in the hands of an expert. The tail tapers down and comes alive, undulating this way and that with every puff of side current, every strip of line. By the same token, a worm looks nothing like a minnow in your hand. Put it in the water. On the right jig, in the right hands--presto. Magic minnow look-alike.

When rigged on jigs, actiontail worms in that magic 4- to 5 1/2-inch range look most like a minnow smallmouths want to eat. Most actiontails have a small sickletail or a fairly long rippletail. Either can be effective, depending on the time and place. Sickletails put out a constant but subtle pulse on a steady retrieve. It's a hum rather than a buzz, compared with a 4-inch grub or a long actiontail. Sickletails like the Persuader Curly Tail and the Berkley 4-inch Power Worm excel in clear water, in highly pressured venues, after cold fronts, and in cold water.

"Snake tails" or rippletail worms put out as much vibration as a grub, but probably sound and feel different to nearby smallmouths. The profile is certainly different--long and slender. The blur of the tail imitates the swimming action of a minnow. Rippletails tend to excel in stained or cloudy water, during activity peaks and during summer or whenever the water is warm.

In spring, during prespawn, smallmouths love smaller sickletail worms presented on a 1/16-ounce jig with 6-pound monofilament. The best tool I've found for this is the Matzuo Heavy Metal Jig, with its realistic shape and holographic fish-head imagery. The one drawback is the premium Matzuo hook. It often stitches itself into the cheek of a smallmouth and becomes almost impossible to remove. But if a smallmouth touches this jig, she's coming into the boat. The water is cold and at its clearest point of the year in most smallmouth fisheries during early prespawn.