These two presentations given here were jointly developed by my fishing buddy, Joe, my wife, Connie and myself. Each has gone through variations with time and each can be very effective under a goodly number of conditions.
Zoomies. A Zoomie is a Zoom Speedworm in watermelon/red with its tail cut off. It's texposed weightless on a 2/0 worm hook and when properly rigged, must hang straight on the hook. Again, it's fished weightless in the following manner......
Casting....the most productive cast is a sidearm skipping cast. Simply cast to likely cover and let the zoomie sink to the bottom, watching line at all times. The skipping alerts the bass that there is something feeding up on top. The slow weightless fall lets the bass see there is someting coming and the slow fall lets the bass study the prey on the way down. If the zoomie does actually hit bottom, allow it to rest motionless for 30 seconds......if nothing picks it up in that time....lift the bait s l o w l y until the rod tip has lifted it two feet. Now, at the top of the s l o w lift, tremor the bait once and then let re-fall.
Tremoring.....tremoring the bait occurs just when you grip the rod handle suddenly harder. It's not a jerk, just a sudden gripping. When done correctly, a tremor will hardly move the rod tip......down in the water, when the tremor occurs, the bait ideally will awaken with a start and will shoot off at an unexpected angle, but not go far, just a quick darting.
Re-falling......after tremoring, let the bait again fall to bottom and this time rest on bottom 15 seconds....after the 15 second pause, lift s l o w l y once again, and if nothing on this time, reel in at a moderate speed and cast to another likely spot.
Each cast done with this presentation, should take one minute. When bass are active, hookups will occur on the first drop.
Connie's contribution.... the second presentation. She uses a regular cast to likely cover/structure and allows the zoomie to fall to bottom, but instead of waiting 30 seconds, only waits 15. She then reels in a half turn slowly and waits another 15 seconds....then after the pause, reels in a half turn s l o w l y and waits another 15 seconds. She does this retrieve until the bait has probably traveled 8 to 10 feet across bottom and then reels in at a moderate pace and casts to another likely spot.
About the long pauses in both presentations....the actual time you need to pause with each presentation will vary with conditions....in other words, a 10 second pause may work better on some days and a longer pause will work better on other days. The slowness overall of the bait presents easy prey to the fish and bothers the territorial fish as presenting itself as an intruder, but the pause times can be varied.
Joe's contribution.....Bump and Fall... While fishing heavy weeds in Canada fishing for large and smallmouth bass...Joe developed the following presentation which brought in many nice bass. He'd cast to an open pocket in the weeds and allow slack line to let the bait fall until it would come to rest on a weed, then when the bait had stopped, he'd lift the rod tip slowly until he could just see the line beginning to move then drop the rod tip quickly to give the bait slack, just a little slack. The zoomie would come off the weed and start drifting downward eventually hanging on another weed.....then he'd patiently lift again an let it fall more. By the time the lure got near the bottom, the bass below had plenty of chances to see the bait and often took it. We caught some really nice fish doing this presentaiton..... When you think about it, it's a vertical version of Connie's presentation which of course is horazontal.
General Notes...
The zoomie will probably surprise you concerning its castability. It just flies on a normal cast. It's ability to skip well adds to its versatility....under log, dock and rock. Not being weighted with internal salt, it doesn't tear up as easily as a senko type bait and has a very enticing slow fall. Another good feature, when one end finally wears out, rig it in the other....when that end wears, you can use it for wacky rigging.
Now, if the regular paddle tail speedworm isn't available and you can only find the Ultra Vibe Speedworm by zoom, you make the following adaptation. Instead of clipping off the tail at the thin spot on the regular speedworm, you cut off the hooktail on the Ultra Vibe Speedworm a half inch up from the flat hooktail, that is to say a half inch up on the body of the worm.
The above presentations can be used with other soft plastics as well. Worms can be rigged so they fall horazontally by placing the hook a little farther back behind the head end.....just have to experiment with the hook placement to get the perfect slow falling balance point so they don''t nose down and plummet down.
