Spring came early to upstate New York. The ice was gone by the first week of March, and daytime temps in the 60s made it prime time for largemouth bass.
Hold on – This story is supposed to be about striped bass fishing.
It is. But it starts 250 miles from the nearest beach.
It was early March, Columbia County, and I was floating in a rowboat with the best largemouth bass fisherman I have ever met, watching him perform microsurgery on rubber worms.
There he was, painstakingly using a heavy-gauge needle to insert rattles into Senko worms, and it hit me. I have to try this with stripers. The fact that we had over 20 fish boated and about a dozen more come off after what he called “the Field and Stream shake” cemented the idea that, with a bit of tinkering, I might break in a new striper tactic. But, first, a little research was needed.
The initial “research” consisted of picking my friend’s brain by the lakeside firepit over freshly acquired hefeweizens. With a bit of Germanic truth serum onboard, he gave up some of the rationale behind using worms that make a lot of noise in the earliest part of the season. He suggested that food sources, water temperature, clarity, and the lack of significant forage fish made noisy worms a natural choice for bringing largemouths to the table.
Any snow that remained was melting fast, and a few rounds of rainstorms began washing worms into the lake from fields, banks, and yards.
I know, I know, this is a striper story.Just trust me.
That these natural worms undoubtedly create noise when they hit the cold water made just as much, if not more, sense. The day’s fishing had been all the proof I needed to apply these theories to the first striper bite of the year.
The second round of research—actual research this time—had me trolling NOAA, Scripps, Woods Hole, state fisheries, and many other websites. What I found was that the magic number is 50. While you might be able to catch striped bass in colder water, once that water hits 50 degrees, the bite is on. It’s common knowledge, but why 50 is the magic number is still debatable.
Aquatic worms begin emerging from the mud once the water temperature reaches 50 degrees. They are a staple in the diet of newly-arriving striped bass.
If you read what the biologists say, seaworms become active when the air temperature rises above 45 degrees and the water temperature is 50 degrees or higher. I just read the fishing reports from March, and they are clear: worms catch the first stripers of the year. There is no denying it as these annelids are the first viable meals moving around after a long winter. Resident stripers start to feed on these protein-packed, snack-sized meals in preparation for the coming spring. But there is no way any living thing can exist on one single food source alone, so what else is on an early striper’s menu? Crabs.
Again, not surprising, but most mid- to northern-Atlantic crab species become active when the water temperature stabilizes at 50 degrees for a week or more. Crabs begin to extract themselves from the mud, thought due to the long hibernation, they are very sluggish. A slow-moving crab warming itself on a submerged rock must be something a striper cannot resist. Access to crabs this time of year is highly limited or impossible for fishermen, so they do not make the best or easiest choices when baiting a hook. That said, a gut check of a March-caught striper would often reveal a belly containing a mix of worms and crabs.
I get all that, but you were talking about rattles.
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The Dinner Bell
When my friend mentioned the noise a struggling earthworm produces when hitting the water, it made so much sense that I was almost embarrassed I hadn’t considered it before. I also wondered why I had never used baits that made noise when fishing for early season stripers. The rest of the year, I tended toward the loudest plugs in creation, yet when the water was the quietest, I hardly ever used anything that produced sound. Again, research made it clear that I should be reconsidering.
A seaworm’s natural locomotion is anything but stealthy. It wriggles and squirms its way in the current, and these movements generate a clear popping sound. If you consider how quiet an early season body of water is, it’s logical that stripers would be able to home in on a worm using the sounds of the its motion through the water. As for crabs, the skitter of even the smallest one generates noise that a striper’s lateral line is bound to pick up. There are great videos and audio recordings of the noise these bait species make.
That was the clincher.
Dune-Sized
I have an extensive collection of both saltwater and freshwater soft plastics. So, when I set out to use my newly acquired knowledge, I pulled everything out and began comparing it to what I knew of seaworms. Almost all my saltwater plastics were baitfish profiles, which was not what I was looking for. Nothing was going to match the long, flowing, writhing movement of a seaworm.
That’s when I started picking through my freshwater worms and uncovered a pack of rarely used 10-inch Berkley Power Worms. They were monstrously long, but in watermelon, purple, and red fleck, they looked the part, and a 10-inch sandworm is not unheard of. I also found a slightly less sci-fi-sized 7-inch YUM Ribbontail Worm in watermelon seed that looked great in color, size, and motion.
These ruler-long worms needed some equally impressive hooks. After trying out a few, I settled on D.O.A. Long Necks in 3/0. Its extended neck provided the perfect rigging for both worms by putting the hook point in a spot that would allow for a hook-up if the fish hit in the middle of the bait or sucked it down from behind. The D.O.As were also the best choice because they have a redfish pedigree and will stand up to saltwater use. Z-Man’s Texas Eye TeXL Jigheads would also be a good choice.
The author prefers 3/0 D.O.A. Long Neck hooks for 7- to 10-inch soft-plastic worms.
Given my research and experience that March with largemouths hitting rattle-injected worms, I knew I wanted to have some sound, but a rattle didn’t seem right. Listening again to the seaworm sound recordings, the idea of using a more subtle banging sound versus a frantic rattling started to take hold. I had recently used a Carolina-rigged shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico, which seemed a better option. Since I didn’t need such a heavy weight when freshwater fishing, I had to order ½-ounce tungsten bullet weights for this method. Remember, the worms drift in the current, so the weight is more for sound and castability than it is about getting the bait down.
The NAB
My next experiment was how to imitate the first crabs of the season. Those tiny crustaceans popping out of the sand and scurrying on and off rocks in warming water had no natural soft-plastic counterpart. I decided to go for impression versus full-on imitation. My freshwater tackle had a surprising amount of would-be candidates.
Crayfish imitations, if presented correctly, would do a great job of mimicking a small crab. As I am partial to the Z-Man soft lures, I had a few that might work, but only one that made me think of a saltwater crab. The TRD Bugz in Bama Bug color was vague enough to give me a crab-like look without being too lobster-esque. But how to present it?
This bait was designed for finesse presentations using a Ned-rig-style jighead. Why reinvent the wheel? Pulling the stoutest Z-man Ned I had, the NedLockz HD in ⅕-ounce, I paired the two, and even in a dry-land test, it looked very much like a crab. I named it the Ned Crab Rig, the NAB.
Using Z-Man’s new tool, the Rattle-Snaker, which injects a glass rattle into a soft bait, I also determined how to add the appropriate sound to this small bait profile.
The “NAB” Rig
Early season stripers often feed heavily on small crabs when they first arrive, so the author devised this creation to fool them. A Z-Man TRD BugZ (in Bama Bug color) is paired with a 1/5-ounce Z-Man NedlockZ jighead. Add a couple of rattles, spray it with some crab scent, and crawl it slowly along the bottom.
The author injects his soft-plastics with Z-Man’s Rattle Snaker kit to add subtle noise to his finesse presentations.
Hedging the Bait
I love to experiment when fishing. For me, it is one of the great joys of the sport, and this was going to be one of my biggest and boldest experiments. I was about to take predominantly freshwater lures and toss them for some of the first stripers of the season. They weren’t made for salt water and I was using untested theories on fish feeding and bait habits. A nagging little idea was that I needed one more thing to make the whole system come together. As I sat in my workshop, my wife started cooking, and the smell of one of her signature dishes made its way through the hallways and into my nose. SCENT! I needed to add scent. Well, I needed to eat dinner, then I needed to add scent.
Once again, some Gulf fishing tricks came in handy. While stalking winter redfish in the flats around Tampa, a friend and I employed scent-injected soft baits and had a high hook-up rate. My Gulf fishing buddy is a former striper fisherman, and we have always commented on how reds and stripers are alike. If injecting a jerk shad with shrimp scent worked for a red, worm oil might work for a spring striper.
Pro-Cure and Pautzke both make excellent bloodworm oils and scents that can kick the presentation of a large rubber worm into high gear. While oils can be applied directly to plastics, injector systems are far more effective, and I don’t have to constantly clean my hands while fishing—the less-is-more principle.
Scent injection also works with crabs, with Pro-Cure having several crab scents, so a refresher while on the water might be necessary after catching a few fish. That’s why I carry a Berkley Gulp Alive Crab spray bottle with me. A light spray revitalizes the bait without having to try and re-inject while wading or on a pitching deck.
This is early spring fishing, and the fish are smaller than expected. I must remind myself that every time I reach for the 9-footer with the 30-pound braid this time of year. These presentations call for light tackle, light line, and simple setups. Seven- to 8-foot medium-light rods with reels in the 3000- to 4000-size range spooled with 15-pound braid and tipped with 20-pound fluorocarbon work just fine for stripers early in the season. Setups this light also make tossing Carolina and Ned (or Nab, if you will) rigs easier, making it all the more fun. Small to mid-size fish taken on lighter tackle is needed to shake the rust off and get the blood flowing again.
Cold Comfort
After all the pieces fell into place, it was time to test things out. I rigged up, pulled the waders on, and headed to my favorite spot. On the first cast of the worm, I got a tap, tap, tippy-tap. After a missed hookset, I recast. Tap, tap, WHAM. I set the hook like Bill Dance and landed my first striper of the early season. It looks like the early worm…
