The stick bait, or artificial worm is one of the most commonly used baits in all of bass fishing. Beginner anglers often have stick baits in their tackle box, and pros have won countless tournaments using this style of bait. Put simply, stick baits catch fish everywhere. Here are some of the best ways to rig a stick bait and draw your next bite!

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Video transcript:

John Carroll:
Hey, what's up guys? John, from Mongo Fishing. Today, I'm here on the Monster Bass channel to talk to you guys about the Lunkerhunt five inch Lunker stick. It came in the January 2022 Monster Bass Lunkerhunt takeover box. So let's get into it.

John Carroll:
All right guys. So like I said, my name is John, from Mongo Fishing, and this is the Monster Bass channel. Now, if you're new to the bass fishing community, you want to learn some tips, techniques, and tricks, and how to become a better bass angler. Make sure you hit the subscribe button right down there below, along with the bell notification button so you get notified every single time Monster Bass puts out another video. My channel Mongo Fishing will be linked in the description. Also, I dig it if he came over and checked me out.

John Carroll:
My channel is mostly tournament footage, though. It's not much for tips and techniques. I might get into like decision making process and stuff like that. But basic tips and techniques, I rarely put those out on my channel. I do occasionally. So I mean, my channel isn't for everybody, I get that. But regardless, I'd still dig it if you came over and checked me out.

John Carroll:
But let's get into these things, man, because these Lunkerhunt Lunker sticks are killer baits, highly effective. And if you don't know how to use them, man, you're missing out. You got to get on this.

John Carroll:
All right. So the Lunkerhunt Lunker stick is Lunkerhunt's version of the stick worm. You know, the biggest stick worm out there is the Yamamoto Senko. That thing was designed by Gary Yamamoto himself. According to him, he was using like the inside of a pen as a mold making these things in the late nineties. I want to say it was 96. Started of selling them. Nobody really bought on to them because they don't look like they do anything. But these things are killer because they don't do much, but they do still do stuff. Enough, it's such a subtle movement. They're driving bass crazy. And these things quickly earned their mark in the bass fishing community.

John Carroll:
So these things have won millions of dollars. Stick baits, as a whole, have won millions of dollars in bass fishing. Jordan Lee won the 2018 Bass Master Classic on Lake Hartwell, solidified his win by throwing stick worms. I mean, he used several different techniques. You don't just win the classic using one technique. But throughout his tournament, it was locked down, buy a stick worm. And up winning $300,000 and a world championship on Lake Hartwell in 2018. In fact, Lake Hartwell is where the 2022 Bass Master Classic is going to be held in March. But regardless, these things just flat work. Great baits to use. I prefer to use them like pre spawn when the water starts warming up and bass really start moving in shallow, to do that whole spawn business. Pre-spawn through like near the end of the fall transitions pretty much when I stop throwing these.

John Carroll:
Pre spawn, you want to use bright, obnoxious colors. This is Sherbert. Colors like this, or like a chartreuse, or a white, or bubble gum, methylate, stuff like that. Right? You want something that's really bright and obnoxious and really sticks out. You can use them bed fishing. You can use them. You can kind of like walk them through some of the grass, swimming worm. Killer, killer, killer, pre spawn technique.

John Carroll:
Now, after the spawn happens, I start breaking these things down into two different colors. And that's natural colors. This is squash, it came off my boat. And this is... what do they call this one? June bug. It looks closer to like a red shad. But the way I look at it is I look green pumpkins, stuff like that, or squash in this case, I like to use that in like clean water, stained water, maybe, but not really dirty water.

John Carroll:
I'm not a big fan of using natural colors in dirty water. I like to use darker colors and dirty water. Because natural colors in clean water, you're wanting to fish to see the bait. Dark colors in darker water, you're wanting to fish to see the silhouette, basically. Right? So just keep that in mind. Natural in clean and then dark in dirty.

John Carroll:
All right. Rigging, I'll go through wacky rig, which is probably my favorite way to fish it. And then we'll get into Texas rig and then weighted Texas rig and then with a tail spinner. So let's get into the rigging portion.

John Carroll:
Okay. So for wacky rig. Catch you a little worm here. You see it's got a flat side and it's got a pointed side. I like to rig, typically when I'm Texas rigging, I like to go on the flat side and have this as a tail. Right here in the middle, near the middle, there's what they call the egg sac. If you have an O-ring tool like this, you slide your worm as far down in there as you want.

John Carroll:
Let's backtrack. We need to find the center of balance. And so typically, the center balance is going to be somewhere near the back side of the O-ring most of the time. So if you don't have an O-ring tool, and you just want to wacky rig it, all you do is you take your hook. This is a number 2, not a 2/0, but a number two. And you put it near the back side of your little egg sac that's sitting right here with the back side. So when you cast this thing, if it sinks one side down faster than the other, then you just got to adjust your hook, move it back, move it forward, move it whatever so this thing sinks nice and flat. Basically, you want it flexing as it falls. You don't want it going down one side faster than the other when it's a wacky rig.

John Carroll:
Now I'd mentioned an O-ring. O-ring tool, what that does, little tool like this, you slide your worm and slide the O-ring tool. And then slide an O-ring, a black rubber O-ring. Man, I don't know why this is so hard for me to do right now. Because I'm grabbing more than one.

John Carroll:
Slide it down, over top, right there. Now you can adjust the same thing. Figure out where the center of balance is. Adjust this thing forward or backward. And then take your hook, run it underneath the O-ring and underneath into the hook itself or into the bait itself. Now what this does is when a fish grabs this and he pulls it. If he rips the worm off, you're still stuck on your O-ring, if you have a properly sized O-ring. There are multiple size O-rings that's why I was having it difficult with this one. This is a little small for this O-ring tool I have. I have multiple O-ring tools, I just happen to grab one off the boat.

John Carroll:
But anyway, so keep that in mind. If you have a properly sized O-ring like this one is, then if this hook tears the bait should stay on the O-ring pretty easily. Okay? So that's wacky rig.

John Carroll:
If you need to sink faster, use a weighted wacky rig. They actually have a technique for that, it's called slim shaking. But that has a slightly different design worm, but typically it's just a weighted, like a Jig head for wacky rigging. Okay. So that's that.

John Carroll:
Now, Texas rigging. I'm going to pull that back out and I'm going to rig up a Texas rig the same way, both styles, regular Texas rig. But I'm going to do it with a 3/0 EWG and a 3/0 round bin worm hook. So they're both the same size hook. They're both Katana hooks. And so you'll be able to see a different between the 3/0 EWG and the 3/0 round bin warm hook. All right.

John Carroll:
So we'll start with a 3/0 round bin warm hook. Looks like that. All you do is you insert the hook in the dead center of your nose there. Come down to about a quarter inch or so, pop it out, slide your worm up around to the... up near the eyelet. Measure out like that, where your hook would be popping out. Bend it, run it right through the center. And then, to expose it, tuck it back in. And there you go. A Texas rigged worm hook. This is on the regular round bend worm hook.

John Carroll:
Now I'm going to set this down and rig another one on an EWG, same exact style so you guys can see the difference in how they look. Now, this one's missing the tail and I'll show you that in a minute why. But it's not going to change what you're going to see here. Still going to run it through the same exact way. Measured out to expose it. Here we go. Now, and put these two side by side up here at their noses, and you'll see... Oops, that one slid down. Might have run that a little too far up.

John Carroll:
Anyway, you'll see the one hook is longer than the other, even though these are both 3/0. One's an EWG, one's a round bend worm. So keep that in mind when you're worm fishing. If you want a little longer hook, you might want to go with the round bend worm hook. If you want a wider gap, go with the EWG. But if you still need a long wide gap, then you might need to go with a 4/0, 5/0, et cetera, just to get that bigger hook. You can also adjust your hook size to adjust your sink rate, so keep that in mind.

John Carroll:
Now, another thing you can do for your sink rate is we're going to take this off of here and take a weighted swim bait hook. Weighted swim bait hook. We're going to take it where the hook came out. When we ran it down about a quarter inch, we're going to hook it up, go the opposite way. And then same thing. Measure it. Find your bend, bam, to expose it. Now you have a weighted worm hook, basically. It's a swim bait hook. This thing will allow it to sink a little bit faster.

John Carroll:
I mean, you can adjust your sink rate anyway with the regular worm hook, just by adjusting a piece of tungsten or whatever on the nose. But this allows you to keep it nice and compact. If you don't want to have to use a peg, or maybe you don't have any pegs, this is another option you can do right there.

John Carroll:
Now, another technique, and this is why this has the end bit off, is there is always tail spinners in my boat. What I mean by a tail spinner is this is a Colorado or Willow blade, your choice. So this Colorado blade with a little bit of a split ring right there, and then a really small swivel and then a screw lock. See that? And then all you do is you screw this in to the tail of your worm or where the tail was. That's why I bit that piece off prior to filming is so that I can just screw this right in.

John Carroll:
And there we go. So now, we have a little bit of flash and a little bit of thump to go along with our stick bait. So super simple, super easy to use, cast it out, let it sink, docks, lay downs, grass. I mean, pretty much anywhere you want. Now, how to fish this? Super simple. Doesn't matter if it's rigged like this or wacky rigged or whatever. It's one of the easiest techniques in the world, man. Cast it out, leave your line slack, let it sink about five seconds. 1-1000, 2-1000, 3-1000, 4-1000, 5-1000, right? What you're doing is you're watching your line. You want to see if it ticks or if it starts swimming away or whatever. But what you're doing is paying attention to your line. You're looking for a bite. Obviously, if it starts swimming array or if you feel a bite, swing on it, but that's what you're doing.

John Carroll:
After five seconds, nothing's happened, pop at a time or two. Start letting it sink back down five more seconds. So it's wacky rigged. As it's falling, it's shimmying, right? I mean, we're talking like super subtle movements. It's not flexing like this. It is just ever so slight shimmies back and forth or up and down, depending on how it's rigged. And again, when you pop it, it'll flex and it'll start slowly shimmying back down. Really hard to notice unless you're actually really paying attention to it. But that's why these things are so effective, it's because the movement is so subtle that it just drives bass crazy. They have to eat it.

John Carroll:
Rod real line. If you are a spin cast person, if you throw spinning rods, spinning reels. Real size, you want about a 2,500 size. Line, you want like eight to 12, depending on whatever it says on the side of your spool, on your spinning reel. Pay attention to that. That actually helps keep down on the backlashes and stuff like that. Or a little birds nest, whatever you want to call it on the spinning reel. But that really helps cut back if you match your line with your reel. And then for the rod, man, I'm a proponent... I'm six foot six. So I am a huge fan of seven foot and above for almost every technique I do. So that's what I'm going to tell you to do. But something that fits you. Me, it's going to be a seven foot medium, maybe a medium heavy, fast action regardless. So that's that. Bait casters, same thing. You want eight to 12 pound floro not mono, seven foot medium to medium heavy, fast action again.

John Carroll:
Reel to speed, I'm a big fan of like seven to one gear ratio and higher. When a fish bites, I want to be able to get them out of the cover as quick as possible, whatever that cover may be. Even if it's just open water, I want to get them back. And again, since you're dead sticking this, the real speed is irrelevant for the actual like fishing part, if you will. Your reel speed really comes into play on this technique when you're trying to get them back.

John Carroll:
But that's that guy's. Again, super simple technique, man. These things are so effective. I fish fast. In almost all my tournaments, I'm just burning down the bank. And so this isn't conducive with the way I fish most of the time. Now with that said, I will still have a bunch of packs of stick worms in the boat with me. Because if the bite gets slow, I'm going to stop and slow down to this stuff. Or if I come across an area that I really got to pick apart, I'm going to come start picking apart with the stick worm because these things are so effective.

John Carroll:
Guys, if you guys enjoyed the video, make sure you hit the thumbs up. Drop a comment below. Myself or one of the other Monster Bass members will gladly answer any questions. Again, my channel, Mongo Fishing, will be linked in the description below. I'll dig it if you came over and checked me out. As always, guys, get out on the water, be safe and go catch a monster bass.