The wacky worm has been around long enough for us to get used to this zany technique. I first encountered the wacky way to rig a worm at a tournament on Cayuga Lake, New York, in the late 1970s.

Yet today, many avid bass anglers still haven’t made wacky worming an integral part of their approach. Now’s the time to go beyond casual experiments, for wacky is its own genre, with as many subtleties and technical aspects as Carolina rigging or flipping.

Wacky Developments

The explosion of enthusiasm for Gary Yamamoto’s Senko and similar soft stickbaits has led to the recent boom in wacky-rigging. Anglers quickly found that hooking the cigar-shaped baits through the middle allowed both ends to wiggle as they dropped—deadly action, indeed.

When Berkley developed their Gulp! Sinking Minnow, astute bassers quickly realized that the tougher hide of the Sinking Minnow, compared to salted plastisol lures, made it ideal for wacky-rigging. Hooks hold firmly in the novel material, so many bass can be caught on a bait.

The Gulp! Wacky Crawler, a 5-inch finesse-style worm, has a natural consistency and powerful scent dispersion. Wacky worms often tear off the hook and are lost on the bottom. Gulp! baits are biodegradable, dissolving into natural substances within a year.

Andre Moore, of Arizona—head of Reaction Innovations lure company and also a bass pro—has long favored wacky-rigging for bass in western waters. He designed a lure with a round ball at each end, a 5.6-inch bait he calls the Ball Breaker. “The balls make the lure vibrate as you pull it,” Moore says. “It’s symmetrical so it won’t twist your line. The Ball Breaker contains a lot of salt so it sinks readily. As it falls, it shimmies back and forth.” The Ball Breaker is available in 11 colors.

At Bass Assassin, Robin Shiver, Jr., also has designed a bait for wacky-rigging, called the K.O. Assassin. Like the Ball Breaker, you can feel the weightless lure vibrate as you pull it through the water. There’s almost as much pulse as with a willowleaf spinnerbait. Like the Ball Breaker, it can be altered by removing one or two of its extremities, which resemble a rattlesnake’s rattles.

Japanese lure makers also have been producing new soft plastics well suited to wacky rigging, subtle baits that work well in clear conditions on pressured bass. Check out the Yammy from Jackall’s Lake Police line, a thin symmetrical worm that’s favored by wacky ace Kota Kiriyama.

Wacky Options: Tradition calls for long straight lures for wacky-rigging, but innovation need not stop there. While fishing for prespawn bass in Texas, Editor In Chief Doug Stange discovered the appeal of a wacky tube. After tearing up nearly all his Berkley Sparkle Power Tubes, he hooked one of the discards through the middle with a Falcon Bait Jerker Hook and started popping bass, to the surprise of his hosts.