Plastic Worms
40 bass vs. 88 bass in 2024
5” Yamasenko wacky rig (various colors), Yum 7” Power Bait Power Worm (blue fleck/firetail), Shaky Head Owner 3/8 oz. jighead with 7” Berkley Power Worm (tequila sunrise)
Top Bass: 3-4 Hennepin Canal – June 7
Top 5 Weight: 9-10 (3-4,1-14,1-10,1-8,1-6)

Comments
This year, I implemented a new type of worm presentation called a Shaky Head. The setup pairs a standup jighead with a worm that is rigged in a weedless fashion. I thought that it would work well on the deep weed edges and drop-offs of the strip mines and it was indeed a winner. In addition, my favorite plastic worm offering, a Senko wacky rig, continued to produce. Finally, I broke out an old original setup, the Texas rig, to fool a lone bass. Plastic worms have been around for a long time for a reason. They work.

June 7 – Top Plastic Worm at 3-4 (19″) from the Hennepin Canal

History
A Texas rigged worm was the only presentation I used when I caught the bass fishing bug in the 1980s. In 2005, I landed my first bass on a Senko wacky rig, and it revolutionized my worm fishing. The Shaky Head presentation joined the ranks in 2025 as I stepped out of the comfort zone after twenty years of relying almost exclusively on the Senko wacky rig. For 2025, only one of my forty bass came on the old Texas rig. The remaining catches were nearly evenly split between the favored Senko wacky rig (nineteen bass) and the new Shaky Head offering (twenty bass). Worms are winners and their application continues to evolve as noted by these various presentations.

Video
On June 7, I went in search of seven bites on a stretch of the Hennepin Canal to push my all-time total on the section to one hundred bass. After two hours and roughly a mile of water, I had six small bass in the log. Bass number seven of the trip was something special as it not only achieved my goal, but it also tipped the scales at 3-4 making it the largest bass I had ever landed on that pool of The Canal. With my mission accomplished, I put the rod down, rowed twenty minutes back to my truck, and headed home. Couldn’t have made up a better fish story if I tried.

 

Last Cast
The effectiveness of the Senko wacky rig means that my use of plastic worms is not going away. While I don’t use the wacky rig a whole lot on the dingier waters of The Canal, as long as I am willing and able to invest time hiking on the strip mines, the presentation will put plenty of bass in the fishing log. With the confidence that I gained in the shaky head setup, I suspect that it will get additional use as well. And perhaps it is time to give the classic Texas rig a few more casts.

Another lure on the way tomorrow so talk to you later. Troy