Entry 115-4

Mark Davis - Don't Forget the Worm

Don't Forget the Old Way

Editor's Note: At the Elite 50 BASS tournament on the Tombigbee River in Columbus, Mississippi, Mark Davis had a wire-to-wire victory. The front-runner after the first day, Davis continued to lead the tournament all three days and won. He won the tournament primarily with a Strike King Ribbon Tail Worm, fishing it the old way. This week Davis will tell us five of his best worm-fishing tactics.

Davis: Most of the bass that I caught on the Tombigbee River at the Elite 50 tournament in Columbus, Mississippi, I caught using the old-fashioned Texas-rigged worm. I cast it toward the bank and dragged it slowly across the bottom like we would fish the Texas-rigged worm 20- or 30-years ago. This old tactic hasn't received much publicity, you don't see fishermen using it much on TV, and this strategy just doesn't seem to be as sexy as it once was. The only reason I'm suggesting it is that it still catches just as many if not more bass today, than it did when we all first learned how to fish this way.

One very-important factor to remember about fishing the Texas-rigged worm by crawling it on the bottom like you once did is that hardly any anglers fish this way today. There are too many other new techniques and lures that get a lot more publicity and that anglers seem to be more excited about than fishing this old traditional tactic. That's one of the reasons I believe that the old way of worm fishing is much-more productive now than it once was - because not many people fish this way any more. Oftentimes the less a tactic is used, the better that tactic will be at producing bass.

Too, fishing the Texas-rigged worm offers bass fishermen a way to penetrate cover and present a lure to a bass that's holding in or under some type of heavy cover. When you're fishing the Texas-rigged worm, the bullet weight will punch through grass, heavy brush, in-between a logjam, through lily pads or any other type of surface obstruction that will keep most other baits away from the bass.

When I say penetrate cover using a Texas-rigged plastic worm, most bass fishermen think that I'm pegging the sinker to the head of the worm. But I don't, unless I absolutely have to do that. The only time I'll peg my sinker to the head of my Texas-rigged worm is when I'm fishing cover so thick that if I don't peg the sinker, the worm will hang over the cover and not go through it. I don't like to peg my sinker to the worm because I've learned that I miss more bass when I do this than I do when the sinker isn't pegged to the worm. Although I don't know why I miss more bass when I peg the sinker, I've proven, at least to myself, that when I don't peg the sinker I consistently take more bass than I do when I peg the sinker.

My favorite worm to fish when I'm using the plastic worm rigged Texas-style is Strike King's 8-inch 3X Ribbon Tail Worm. The depth of water I'm fishing will determine the size of slip sinker I'm using. I prefer to fish weights from 1/8- to 1/2-ounce. Day in and day out, I'll be fishing the 1/4-ounce weight more than any other.




 

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