It's amazing how many times I have seen anglers "OVER-WEIGHTING" their soft plastic lures. While the use of weights is a necessity at times, most times the use of weights is NOT needed.

Let's take for example a 7 inch ribbon tail worm, the worm itself has considerable weight to it - add this to a 2/0 hook, the use of a small snap or swivel, and you have even more weight. Fished on 10 lb test line, this rig needs no additional weight for fishing in and around the edges of weeds, and most structure.

Besides the ease of skipping these unweighted lures to hard to reach spots, the worm for instance will sink slowly giving it the appeal of a live worm, and every twitch of the rod tip will make the worm come to life.

This stands true with soft rubber minnows, lizards, rubber frogs,a nd creature baits. While you may not get the casting distance you would get while adding weights, the realistic slow fall rate of these baits presented weightless makes up for the lack of casting distance.

The key here lies in the fall rate of weightless lures compared to the same lures which have been weighted. In the real world of the bass, worms DO NOT sink through the water column like rocks. Instead they enticingly wiggle and sloooooowly sink to the bottom. Most times they never reach bottom before getting inhaled by some sort of finned critter.

Minnows, lizards, and creatures also fall slowly when injured or dying or for the most part while they are fighting for their lives, so to give your soft plastics that look of being as realistic as possible try fishing them with no weights at all.

Of course, I need to acknowledge that there is a time and place for texas and carolina rigs with chunky bullet weights. A good rule of thumb is to use these rigs when probing open water and flats. Pitching to slop and thick weeds is perfect for a texas rig and bullet weight too.

When banging the banks and keying on visible structure, try going weightless.

You will be in more control of the lures and you will be able to impart more lifelike actions into the lures then you would if they were weighted.

Mike Panek

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