Glenn Sapir: Bubblegum pink plastic worm has earned its reputation as a bass-catching favorite – Outdoor News
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When the bass harvest season opens on June 15 in New York, I can predict which lures I will have tied on my line. I will have four spinning outfits ready to go, each with one of my old faithful artificial baits.
Of the possible baits, one is a sure bet. Ready to be cast will be a 5-inch plastic worm rigged wacky style, that is, with the hook point going in and coming out of the worm at about the midway point. The bait brand will be either a Senko or Gajo, the latter manufactured right here in New York.
Nothing unusual about that choice of baits. What some anglers might consider unusual, however, is the color. Although I have a wide selection of these worms in a variety of colors, I always start with my mainstay: bubblegum pink.
I have been using that color for years, and it has proven to be highly effective from Florida to Canada on both largemouths and smallmouths. I have opened the eyes of many expert fishermen to the effectiveness of this bait.
Fishing on Candlewood Lake in Connecticut, my brother Rick and I introduced our guide, one of the best bass fishermen in the Empire State, to this worm. Zack Hajeckate, who has represented New York on the state’s BASS Federation team, had never even seen this color worm being used, and even laughed when he first saw it. By the end of our outing, we had made him a believer.
Two years ago, fishing on Pennsylvania’s Lake Wallenpaupack with a guide who also had never seen a bubblegum worm, I caught a whole bunch of hefty smallmouth bass on the pink bait. Though he was skeptical at my first cast, it didn’t take long to convince him.
The next morning, ready to take out a couple of other anglers in my family fishing party, the guide showed up with a couple of packages of off-brand bubblegum pink worms.
“They were the only ones I could find in the local tackle shops,” he told me.
He, too, had become a believer.
Two years ago, several members of the New York State Outdoor Writers Association enjoyed a few days at a pond-side lodge in Washington County in the Adirondacks.
Eager to test the waters, where years earlier I had enjoyed a successful outing for largemouths, I and two fellow members took out a johnboat on our first evening. My two companions, using their own favorites, were blanked. My bubblegum worms caught several bass.
The next day, fishing with Dave Figura, former outdoor writer for the Syracuse Post-Standard, I was cleaning up on largemouths, all on the bubblegum pink plastic worm. Dave had never used that color and didn’t have any in his tackle arsenal. I was happy to give him a few, and he immediately joined me in bringing bass to the net.
Later that fall, I received a text that Dave forwarded from his 13-year-old nephew. It seems the lad, supervised by his grandmom, went fishing in a stocked pond on a golf course. Dave had put a bubblegum worm on both of their outfits.
“On the first cast, my sister caught a 15-inch largemouth,” Dave wrote me. “Then her grandson caught four or five more in the 12- to 15-inch range on successive casts.”
Dave’s sister recalls that, “The fish were practically jumping out of the water to get at those plastic worms.”
The pink worm had created two more converts.
Of course, bubblegum pink isn’t the only color worm I use, but whether I am fishing for largemouths or smallmouths, it is the color with which I begin my fishing day.
No matter what color worm I am casting, a couple of associated items are constants. I typically have Trilene XT 8-pound-test on my reel. My hooks are Gamakatsu Octopus in size 2/0.
It is likely that on my first outing this June, I will have a Keitech swim bait, a Rebel PopR topwater bait and a shallow-running StrikeKing crankbait (Kevin Van Dam Tournament Series 1.0) rigged on my three other outfits. They are proven bass catchers for me.
If I could only take one outfit out in my boat with me, however, at the end of the line would be a bubblegum pink plastic worm.
Glenn Sapir has gathered 167 of his magazine and newspaper articles into a handsome, leatherette-covered book, “A Sapir Sampler: Favorites by an Outdoor Writer.” Copies are available for $29.50, plus $6 for shipping (check or money order; note whether you want it signed), from Glenn Sapir, Ashmark Communications, Inc., 21 Shamrock Dr., Putnam Valley, NY 10579.
