I happened to be hold up in my basement workshop due to bad weather and started wondering, now what can I do with all those old soft plastic lures collecting dust for decades? A year ago I discovered a lure design that catches all fish species : a soft plastic lure in the shape of a bullet. No action tail, nothing fancy, just a cone shaped tail that turned out to be incredible at catching fish.

So I figured, why must a lure even have an action tail if the lure's body has enough action to provoke strikes? Enter the plastic worm - or at least a part of it.




The lures above are from the tail section of plastic worms (except for the minnow grub). I tried to find the slimmest worm bodies I could find, cut them to a length of 1.5-2" and rigged them on 1/16 oz. ball head jigs. They caught as many fish as any lure I own ! The craw claw was from another bass lure I fused to a grub body using a candle flame. Another winner!

Fish respond to lure action and profile and what better than something finesse in design that gets fish to clobber a lure which you may have laying around unused?

Nice, like the thought of using my old worms for crappie. good post.

Isn't that a Ned rig?

Cheers,

George

What's a Ned rig? The only rigs I know are Texas, Carolina and drop shot.

Excellent post and idea! I have bags upon bags of plastic worms/lizards/crawls from my bass fishing days. Gonna see what I can concoct for crappie catching.

Thanks again for the ideas.

Yeah pretty much the TRD or NED rig. I'm going to Michigan next week and that's probably what I'll be throwing 90% of the time that I'm not using live nightcrawlers. Works great for the smaller (to us) midwest bass, sure NY is pretty similar. Hopefully I luck into a pocket of crappie on the lake. So far the only crappie I caught on this lake was on the fourth of july when one hit a firecracker I through in the water.

I've been know to take the last couple inches off a Berkley powerworm curly tail with great success too.

I haven't bought a crappie body in the last 2 years. I employ this technique and get about a years worth in a couple of days. I watch football on Sundays and when there are two CARP teams on, I get out the scissors and used worms. My son likes to make his own spin on these baits also. I have found that they slide down the hook a little easier, but that can be fixed