I have never used a plastic worm before and am trying to learn how butt every time I try I just get lost.

How sad to see all my life experience summed up into one page tosser LMFAO
Accually I couldn't have said it any better for a soon to be plastics lover.

Is it because there are so many ways to rig and fish a worm that it can become undaunting at times?  You merely have to start with one style and go from there.

i had never fishied with worms and was in the same delima u r in...so to solve the problem i went to our localgander mountain and asked one of the clerks in the fishing area and explained i had no idea what i was doing...he showed me several ways to set up a worm and was very helpfull.

I started with a Carolina rig . just toss it out and slowly real it in you want to just drag it across the bottom you will feel bumps and ticks because of the bottom content . if you see the line move or feel a lite tick or something feels different set the hook . You may be setting on a lot of nothing but you may be setting on a fish to .

they say the Carolina rig is a good rig to start with . YOU COULD use a walking sinker too and fish it like a Lindy rig just dragging it along the bottom it will raise and fall .
if you have a boat you can drift or slowly troll the Carolina rig .

The two best ways i can suggest is either a texas rig in which you take a offset hook run the barb end thru the nose of the worm and pop it out the bottom of your bait enough to cover your knot then push the barb back thru the bottom to the top and skin hook the barb end,making sure it is strait, this works great for sloppy waters. the next is the easiest i can suggest wacky style just take a strait shank hook and punch it in the middle of your worm good luck!

I have to agree with northbass about starting out with a texas rigged worm. Even that takes some trial and error getting the hook to sit just right without kinking the worm. But I feel a texas rig is easy to fish.

Brian

Some of the newer plastics now have a groove molded in to make it easier to get the bait hooked straight. Tom

There are tons of ways to use a plastic worm. Experiment around and see what works best for you!
TIGHT LINES!

TWO WORDS....WACKY WORM...GO TO YOU-TUBE...TYPE IN WACKY WORM AND PAY ATTENTION

Here n the southeast. We will Texas rig or Carolina rig it. I Carolina rig it. Give yourself about 8inches leader; or more. That way u can feel the bottom and the fish. You will now when BIG ALICE is on the other end.

when plastic worms became popular in the late 70's early 80's; i was taught to let the fish run with the worm [open your bail] and set the hook when the fish stops running. it was explained that bass will grab the worm and run with it to a safe spot; THEN suck it into its mouth. when it discovers its plastic; he'll spit it out. most of the time he'll suck it in a second time just to be sure it's not edible. since the fish will grab the tail to run with it; a stinger hook riged at the tail will help lose less fish.

I don't appreciate making plastic worm fishing complicated. The reason is when they first hung on a pin in a local marina about 1960, nobody had a clue how those Creme worms were supposed to be fished. They were just there. We stared and passed em up many times laughing at what appeared to be a joke until my uncle decided to buy a pack of white worms. How to rig these things? There were no "worm hooks". We had no choice but to rig them like we would a live night crawler worm, impaled in the mid section by a simple crappie hook. And we caught bass like crazy. It was many years before we tried a "Texas Rigged" worm, reluctantly, because we already had experienced plenty of success with our version of what is now called a "Whacky Rig". Soon we made some weedless long shanked hooks using spring steel wire and solder, then threaded them into worms to make them weedless. We strung up to three hooks through, one at the head, one mid worm, and one at the tail with a small crappie hook because of "short strikes". The monofilament mainline connected to all three hooks to make one unit. Then came upon the marina shelves pre-strung Creme worms like what we were making. We tried them, but ours were better, though each took at least 20 minutes to make. Come stormy days and winter we made them up by the hundreds, stretching them over Styrofoam panels and held on with rubber bands.

The main thing is get a worm on a hook and keep it wet where bass hang out. Eventually you will see or read about them and get into the art of worm fishing, or you might completely abandon it in favor of faster fishing. Much of the fun of bass fishing is not knowing what will happen when you put any bait in the lake. More fun is in experimenting, just trying out an idea while holding a hook up against a worm. Eventually you will figure out how to fish the worm weedless, but in my opinion the most important thing it to hook a bass on one. Once you are hooked on plastic worms you will decide to master them.

Jim

Sounds like to me we have missed the whole evolution of plastic worm fishing.  Everybody seems to think they were the first to rig a certain way.  Obviously, somebody was first but the question is how did they get those plastic critters on the shop shelves and walls.  Hats off to Creme Worm and those Giant Plastic Companies of Today.  It seems to me that the popularity of plastic worms and the catch and release concept were almost parallel concepts.  No doubt, if you practice letting the fish run with worm no matter how hard you try you have killed many a bass.  I remember the horror of digging those worms out of fish's throat or cutting open some bass and finding one of those triple hook rigs inside except the plastic worm had dissolved but the three gold hooks and mono were still in its gut no matter who assembled the rig.  Sure if you practice setting the hook as quickly as possible you will miss one now and then but the fish is still alive to be caught another time.  We seem to forget the importance of putting a healthy fish back in the water.  George Perry was trying to feed his family not to hang some trophy on the wall.  With today's technology maybe we need to kick "catch and release" to another level. Those big time sporting goods companies owe their very existence to catch and release. I love the concept in Texas of turning those trophies over to DNR to breed and put back healthier than they came out.  I believe at least one trophy has been caught twice and the state record has been a part of that program.  It's not a perfect answer but its a step in the right direction.  Any good taxidermist can create a replica that looks better than the original.  Why not give the whole sport a little CPR (Catch. Photograph, Release)?   Keep what you need, practice CPR, encourage the industry to find ways to strengthen the genetics.  As we practice proper land reclamation there will be greater opportunities to create new fisheries and improve those that we have harmed.  Did you ever think someone would open such a package (can) of worms?  Good fishing and do what we can to pass on to our children and their children's children great fishing.  Uncle Tom  Sorry, I didn't mean to be so winded!

Well, Tom, we rigged 3 hooks to be sure to harvest at least 50 pounds of bass a week to have enough fillets for our weekly fishfry. That's been going on steadily since the late 50s, maybe longer before they made the lake. We ate up 8 pound bass regularly until someone decided to try cooking the ones we usually threw back, under 3 pounds. We changed from catching a few big bass to hundreds of smaller ones a week until creel limits came along. Back then nobody really cared how big your bass were, but they did care about parasitic worms in them.

To this day the largest lake in Arkansas is not considered a C&R lake. We still harvest heavily. There are 5 four-slot fish cleaning stations around Lake Ouachita maintained by the Corps of Engineers, complete with "city water", bone grinders, septic fields, night lights and outlets for electric fillet knives. Even so you are likely to have to stand in line to get a slot or share one with a buddy. Each has several big steel garbage cans that are emptied at least once a day by contractors, full of fish carcasses until the stations are winterized, mostly stripers, maybe 40% bass. Obviously harvesting hasn't hurt the bass population there. I agree some lakes can't support a fish population like that, so sometimes C&R is necessary. However, when a state bass management plan calls for harvesting you can bet managed harvesting improves the bass, preserves them, and keeps a lot of anglers very happy with a prime delicacy better than cod, though not as tasty as crappie.

Jim

I hear you Jim!  I wasn't advocating catch and release.  Personally, I enjoy those bass fillets from those 2 to 3 pound fish and agree there are often too many that size as opposed to the 8 to 12 pound fish.  My concern is the economical development of ways to strengthen the ones that are released.  For instance, the care they could receive in live wells in the boat, etc.  I would like to see pictures of cleaning stations you mentioned--that's what I call progress, even to the use of solar power.  Thanks for your thoughts and wish you the best in fishing.  Don't forget the "tater salad" with those fillets and the peelings work good in your cricket box for food and moisture and they work good in worm beds.  Uncle Tom

Well, Tom, I doubt anyone in my family should eat another fried fillet. We bake and broil these days, so we don't need quite so many fish. I told all that in hopes of whetting appetites for worm fishing. We did it from scratch, with no instructions, no ideas, no magazines, no books covering it, no pros demonstrating the worms, and of course no internet. It's really too simple. Add hook to worm and tie to line, then put it in water likely to hold bass. Maybe add some split shot like we did, one little one at a time till we got bit.

You mentioned who did it first and how did Creme get their stuff so widely distributed. I don't have a clue, but I do suspect thousands of anglers figured out how to rig the worms all about the same time wherever the worms were sold. Many back then would have taken whatever they figured out to their graves, so the spread of information was at a snail's pace.

OK, so I need to post about cleaning stations. Next time I am at one I'll take some pictures and start a thread. For now all I have is a shot of some stripers I cleaned for a couple of clients I guided. I didn't catch any of those fish, just did the work so they could. Click Here
The fish are laid out on one of 4 slots under one roof. Each slot is made of stainless steel, has a water nozzle like for a kitchen sink. I always carry my own cutting board, though there's usually one available. A 120 v receptacle for the electric knife was behind me on a support post. Lighting overhead comes on by photocell. The guts and skins slide through a gate (on the left) into a hopper. You punch a big button on a pole and the grinder starts up and flushes into a septic field. The big parts go in a can.

Jim

Creme worms are very colorful and unique worms.

They've come a long way from those original 3 colors, black, purple and earthworm brown 6" Scoundrels, which BTW are still available. That's all we needed for a long time, all the bass wanted in the beginning. The interesting thing is bass are still being fooled by those original three. I still use Creme worms, but use many other brands and types.

Jim