Did you ever think you’d eagerly pay almost a dollar apiece for a sack of soft plastics? Well, if you’re a serious bass chaser, chances are good that you’ve done just that—forked out nearly $5 for a pack of five Senkos. And if you’re like most anglers, you probably agree it was money well spent.

Since its introduction in 1997 by Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits, the Senko has been the hottest soft plastic bait in the world. Yamamoto, the two-time Bassmaster Classic qualifier now living in Texas, invented the pace-setting soft stickbait and has gone on to sell over three million Senkos.

Need proof of the Senko’s allure to both bass and bass anglers? Consider the plethora of lure companies that now offer a similar bait: Berkley’s Gulp! Sinking Minnow; the Yum Dinger; Zoom Z-Nail; Wave Tiki Stick; Gambler Ace; Bass Pro Shops Stick-O; Kinami Flash; Case Magic Stik; Gene Larew Sinking Slugger; Prowler Slim Jim; and Bass Assalt’s Salty Stik, just to mention a few.

Imitation is more than the sincerest form of flattery in the lure industry. It’s a necessity when it involves a whole new genre of fish-catchers. For lure makers and bass enthusiasts alike, it was either jump on the wagon or be left behind.

Why They Work

In case you’ve been living in a cave with Osama bin Laden, you know that a Senko features a tapered head, wide middle section, and pointed tail. Heavily laden with salt, the Senko casts well and sinks quickly for an unweighted lure. But it’s the distinctive manner of its descent (with both ends shimmying slightly) that makes the lure so irresistible to bass.

“I think what makes it unique is that it’s almost featureless,” says accomplished Florida pro Bernie Schultz. “It’s a fat-bodied, straight-tailed worm, and it has the most unusual sink of any piece of plastic. Moreover, there are no ostentatious features for bass to get used to.

“The wiggling action as it sinks does the trick. If you rig a Senko wacky-style, both ends wiggle as the weight of the hook and the lure pull it down. If you rig it Texas style without a weight, it still wiggles but with more tail action. This unique lure also will back up if you pull it along and then throw slack into the line. No other worm will do that.”

All-time tournament king Roland Martin also is a Senko fan. “It has subtle, natural action on the fall,” Martin says, “and when it falls to the bottom, it’s like a stick in the water. An object lying on the bottom like that tends to arouse the curiosity of nearby bass. One feature that nobody has been able to copy is that a Senko has so much salt in it that its specific gravity is way heavier than other soft plastic lures I’ve used, so it sinks faster than any other piece of plastic.”

No doubt that soft stickbaits have proven themselves during nearly every season and in a variety of situations in their short life spans. “We’re still learning about baits like Berkley’s new Gulp! Sinking Minnow,” Texas pro Gary Klein says. “Some guys on the West Coast have been using them for a while, but most of us are still discovering all the things that various styles of baits will do and the different techniques that work best with them.

“The key to these types of baits is their sink. The Gulp! Sinking Minnow imitates the dying quiver of a creature in a helpless dive to the bottom. Its action is the key to getting bass to bite.” Because of their tantalizing built-in action, soft stickbaits are tremendous visual lures, so they’re generally more effective in clear water. But don’t underestimate their attraction under various water-color conditions.

“We’ve known that in plastic worm fishing the lighter the sinker the more bites you’ll get,” says 2002 Bassmaster Classic champion Jay Yelas. “Soft stickbaits like the Gulp! Sinking Minnow are the ultimate lightweight bait. You basically have a worm with no weight—just a hook. It extends the light-sinker theory to the extreme. The slow fall is part of the attraction. That slow tantalizing fall with the tail shaking looks like something alive that’s drifting down, like a sickly nightcrawler, sinking with a little wiggle. Bass can’t resist it.”

When They Work

Although soft stickbaits catch bass at all depths and were first envisioned as a tool for fairly deep water, many anglers have found that soft sticks are at their best in mid to shallow depths. “The best time of year to throw one is when bass are shallow and cautious, refusing to bite power-type lures like spinnerbaits, jigs, and topwaters,” Yelas says. “And one of the best times is around the spawn when you often have to finesse them. Then in the hot weather of summer and during the fall cool-down, bass often revert to that picky attitude.”

Martin emphasizes that the Senko “has been an absolute killer on spawning bass for me, particularly the light colors like chartreuse and pearl. You can tug on it as the bait falls and just glide the Senko onto the bed. It drives ‘em wild.”

Lake Fork guide and tournament competitor Lance Vick favors Wave Worm’s Tiki Stick for sight-fishing—a weightless bait that can be cast far across clear shallow pockets so it sneaks up on skittish bedding bass or other wary fish.

“Whenever bass are shallow, cast it to the area and just let it sink, then give it a twitch,” Vick advises. “Pause it and then twitch it. Adjust your speed according to the activity level of the bass or the number of fish in the area. When they’re packed into an area, a faster action triggers them better. When you can’t spot fish, the slower you fish it, the better.”

Rigging Options

Texas-Style—“Like most anglers, I’m probably most familiar with fishing it Texas-rigged with no weight,” Klein says. “I cast it out and let it sink on a slack line.

“Last April, I found a great spot at Guntersville Lake in Alabama. I’d just fished through one of my best areas and had only one bite. I knew more bass had to be in there; I just had to figure out how to catch them.

“I rigged a weightless Texas-rigged stickbait and started throwing to the same stumps. After letting it sink on a slack line, I’d let it sit there a second and just tick it a bit with the rod tip. I went back through that area and had 15 bites.”

Wacky Rigs—Probably the next most common method is wacky-rigging a weightless soft stickbait. Hooking it in the middle seems to magnify the inherent action of these lures.

Yelas uses a small Mustad octopus-style hook for this technique, which he employs both for spawning bass and other hard-bottom situations like sandy holes in fields of shallow vegetation. Missouri pro Stacey King enjoyed success dead-sticking a Bass Pro Shops Stick-O rigged wacky-style around shallow weeds and wood in a Bassmaster tournament on the California Delta. To fish that cover, he used a 4/0 Gamakatsu Octopus hook sporting a homemade weedguard.

Sinker Rigs—Back home in Missouri, King finds an application for a weighted stickbait as well. He rigs a 5-inch Stick-O on a 5/16- to 3/8-ounce ballhead jig from the Prespawn through Postspawn periods. The jighead helps him reach prespawn bass at their staging depths that may be as deep as 20 feet in these clear Ozark reservoirs. And he follows spawners as they move off their nests and into deeper water.

Last June, King showed me how deadly a Stick-O can be on postspawn bass—both on a jighead and a drop-shot rig. We fished the ends of long, tapering points that drop into creek channels, humps, and ridges in the James River arm of Table Rock Lake. To reach bass holding in 16 to 20 feet of water, King cast a watermelon-color Stick-O on a 1/4-ounce jighead tied to 8-pound-test fluorocarbon line from the front of the boat, while I dragged a pumpkinseed version rigged wacky-style on a Drop Shot setup that included a 1/0 Gamakatsu Drop Shot hook and 1/4-ounce tungsten ball weight on the end.

On an afternoon when fishing was reported by all to be tough, these techniques produced more than 30 bass that included largemouths up to 4 pounds and several 3-pound-plus spotted bass.

Flippin’ It

The productivity of soft stickbaits in heavy cover is something Gary Yamamoto didn’t initially anticipate. “I’ve discovered that it’s a great bait for flipping heavy cover because it’s slender and slips right through twigs or weed stalks,” says Yamamoto, who flips and pitches a 6- or 7-inch Senko with a stout 7-foot rod, 16- to 20-pound-test Sugoi fluorocarbon line, and a 1/4- to 3/4-ounce bullet sinker. “There’s nothing to hang up, and it’s a good way to cover water quickly. Just drop it in quietly and wiggle it around a bit. If they’re going to take it, they’ll bite as it falls in.”

Yelas flips and pitches a 5-inch Gulp! Sinking Minnow on 20-pound-test FireLine braid in heavy cover, but he switches to 20-pound Vanish fluorocarbon in sparse vegetation. “It flips well because it’s so heavy, which allows greater accuracy,” he adds. “I make my presentation and give it controlled slack line and watch as it falls. As soon as it hits bottom, I may hop it once or twice. Then I usually reel it straight in and make another flip or pitch. Ninety-nine percent of the time a fish eats the bait as it’s falling and wiggling.”

Other Considerations

Rods—For his soft sticks, Stacey King selects a medium-heavy 61⁄2- or 7-foot pitching stick, and Klein prefers a 7-foot medium-heavy model. Bernie Schultz agrees with those baitcasting choices, but he occasionally switches to a 61⁄2-foot spinning rod for skipping small sticks on light line. Yelas, who uses a heavy-action 61⁄2-foot baitcaster, downplays the importance of the rod in fishing soft sticks.

“You don’t work the bait with the rod at all,” he notes. “You chunk it out there and let it do its thing as it sinks to the bottom. When it hits the bottom, I generally reel it in and throw it out again. But the rod is important for getting a good hookset.” Because soft stickbaits are so thick and the plastic so dense, most pros select a long, heavy-power baitcasting rod to get a strong hookset.

Line & Hook Size—Most experts favor an offset-shank wide-gap hook for Texas-rigging soft stickbaits and a bait-style hook for wacky-rigging. Tiny sticks like the 3-inch Yum Dinger call for a 1/0 or #1 hook, and size increases up to the 7-inch Senkos and Stick-Os that call for a 6/0 model. Monofilaments testing from 14- to 25-pound test are favored, depending on cover and lure size.

Lance Vick adjusts hook and line style and thickness to alter the sink rate of his Tiki Stick. In thick shallow grass he uses a larger hook and heavy mono. For wacky-rigging a weedbed in say 6 feet of water, he switches to fluorocarbon line (which sinks faster than mono) and a heavier-gauge hook.

Color—The most productive soft stickbait colors mirror the most popular choices with other soft-plastics— watermelon, watermelon-red, green-pumpkin, junebug, red shad, black-blue, and black-red.

“The soft stickbait is the wave of the future in bass fishing,” Jay Yelas concludes. “It’s not a cure-all that works in every situation, but the trend in fishing across the country is toward finesse baits, due to fishing pressure.

“Many anglers have been forced to try finesse-type presentations to consistently catch bass. The weightless Gulp! Sinking Minnow fits this trend perfectly. As more anglers become more skilled and the bass more educated, it takes an even more natural-looking bait and a natural presentation to fool them.”

*Tim Tucker, Hawthorne, Florida, is a freelance writer and photographer who has contributed articles to In-Fisherman publications. He also publishes “Pro Angling Insider: Your Guide to the Business Side of Fishing,” a bi-monthly newsletter for industry insiders. For information, call 800-252-FISH or visit www.timtuckeroutdoors.com.