Kyle Welcher knows there are bigger poker hands than a straight, but any day of the week, he feels pretty confident with five cards in numerical sequence. Likewise, a straight tail worm may not be the fanciest bait in his box, but the Bassmaster Elite Series pro from Opelika, Ala., often wins big with this one.
Speaking of the hand and the bait, Welcher said: “It’s not the flashiest, but most of the time, it gets the job done.”
Welcher is well-known for his professional poker background, so strategic calculation lives in his wheelhouse. Of course, the experienced angler in him knows he needs a variety of bait shapes, each with their own performance style.
But sometimes simple is best.
“A straight tail worm is the most natural presentation; there’s no manufactured action there,” Welcher said. “The quality and softness of the plastic is what gives it a lot of natural movement.”
Wes Logan agrees and notes that a straight tail worm’s minimal water displacement makes it a more subtle offering, with a lot of flapping and swirling. When fish are snapping, he’ll definitely show ‘em the active stuff, but whether it’s seasonal or conditional, if he has to coax them, he’ll dial back the boldness.
When it’s hot/when it’s not
Options are many, with particular styles ranging from Zoom’s venerable trick worm, to stick baits like the time-honored Yamamoto Senko, or the Missile Baits 48 made by Welcher’s fellow Elite pro John Crews, and slender finesse models like the Roboworm or X Zone Deception Worms. Ridges, rings, a little wider here, a little slimmer there; body designs vary, but the common trait is the absence of action aft.
Sure, everything moves to some degree, but comparing straight tail worms to ribbontails, swimming worms and cut tails make the appearance unmistakably dull. Some might say “subtle” — and that’s really the whole point.
“A straight tail worm is all about fall rate and letting it fall as naturally as possible, letting it have that super natural flow through the water,” Welcher said. “If you think about a worm with a big tail, that has a manufactured action that controls it; whereas a straight tail worm moves naturally as it can in the current.
“Whenever it’s tough, like in the postspawn, that’s when I use a straight tail in (many different) ways. It’s for when they’ve been on the bank for a little while, they’ve seen a lot of different types of stuff, they’re not extremely aggressive, the water starts to clear up, the fish can see what’s going on, so that seems to be when it excels.”
Logan adds: “For me, a straight tail worm excels during that three- to four-week period when fish are actually locked on beds. They’re not really wanting to chase, so dragging that worm around where they’re wanting to spawn or where their eggs are; I don’t know what it is, but it really seems to produce then.”
Presentation styles
When it comes to showing fish a straight tail worm, Welcher is wide open.
“I use it as a wacky rig, Neko rig, shaky head, punch shot, a flipping bait, a Ned rig, drop shot and weightless,” he said. “Bass eat worms, so rig (a straight tail worm) as many ways as you can, because they eat it.”
Depth and habitat often define the package he chooses, but drilling down to some of the specifics, Welcher said his goal is to find the optimal way to fish his straight tail worm around the structure he’s targeting.
“Around rocks, brush or deeper laydowns, a shaky head might be the best option because it stands up when it hits the bottom, and it (can be rigged) weedless,” he said. “But if you’re trying to get into some sparse grass, you might want to fish it on a Texas rig that can penetrate better.
“If you’re fishing seawalls with 2 feet of water, you might want to fish it unweighted and twitch it back to the boat. It’s really just finding a profile that you have a lot of confidence in and then rigging in many different ways, depending on the structure. They’ll eat it under a dock in 2 feet of water or a brush pile in 37 feet of water, so just find the optimal presentation for every situation.”
Logan is fond of Neko rigging a Zoom Trick Worm or Zoom Zlinky — a technique he employed in his second-place finish at the 2021 Elite event on Lake Guntersville. There, he found this unobtrusive presentation the right fit in clear water where postspawn fish were shadowing bream beds.
“With a straight tail worm, that Neko rig has an action that’s different than a Texas-rigged ribbontail, or something like that,” Logan said. “It’s not a common action that they’re used to seeing, and you can’t get that action if you Neko rig a curly tail or a swimming worm.
“Around those bream beds, you didn’t need a whole lot of action because the fish were getting pressured really bad,” he said of the Guntersville experience. “That’s why the straight tail worm excelled in that scenario.”
Presentation tips
Let it go: When the bite’s extremely tough, Welcher downsizes his shaky head — both in weight and hook size.
“The bigger the hook you put in a worm, the more it restricts the natural action. You also want to go as light as you can, but that shorter shank hook will give it better action in the water.”
Line: With a light 1/8-ounce shaky head around cover, he’ll use 10- to 12-pound Sunline Shooter fluorocarbon, but if he’s dropping a 1/2-ounce rig on deep brush piles, he’ll go 20-22.
“I match my line to how heavy the bait is, how big the gauge of the hook is and the cover that I’m around,” Welcher said. “Anytime I have an exposed hook, like a wacky rig, Ned rig or a drop shot, I’ll go as light as 8-pound test line.
“If I’m trying to penetrate through the plastic, or if I’m using a wacky rig with a weed guard, I’ll go with 10-pound line, because it can handle that little more of a hook set you need to penetrate.”
Tag team: When Logan knows worm tactics will play a big role in his day, he’ll rig an active look, like a ribbontail or a swimming worm and complement that look with a straight tail worm.
“I’ll probably start with the more active worm, and if I’m getting some fish that are pulling the tail off or not getting the whole bait, that’s when I’ll swap to a straight tail,” he said. “You tend to get a lot more hook ups when you see that situation.”
