I will admit some lures make me a skeptic when I first see them. I didn’t think much of the Perfection Lures David Dudley Wacky Worm at first glance, but after I took it to the water, the fish told me otherwise. I was seeing a bulbous version of a stickbait and wasn’t sure if it was worth playing with when I already had a proven winner in that category. I’m an old school angler and it’s hard for me to change off of a few key staples. But in the spirit of fairness, I rigged one up and took a few packs to the water. The rest is of course history, and now, I have a whole shoebox full of them in my boat. It’s an impressive soft plastic that catches bass very well.
SPECIFICATIONS ON THE WACKY WORM
The Wacky Worm is approximately 5 3/8 inches long and each bait weighs roughly 3/8 ounce each. So it’s an easy to cast lure, but it’s soft and skippable so it fishes great on spinning gear and baitcasting gear alike. I’ve fished it on a jighead, on a weighted hook and wacky rigged on a weedless wacky hook. All are great ways to fish this bait but the weighted hook and weedless wacky are the best options in my opinion for how this bulbous stick bait is made.
The larger heads on either end give the stickbait an exaggerated action as it falls through the water column horizontally. But those large ends also shake really well when you shake it along the bottom on an oversized ned head or shaky head jighead. The bait is very soft and thus has a lot more action than a lot of similar stickbaits in my opinion.
FORMULATION IS UNIQUE
The formulation on this soft plastic bait is unique. It’s loaded with salt. I always test soft plastics the same way. I stretch them to their limits, I rake the bait up and down to see how much salt is in it. And then you can get a feel for the formulation of the bait. This bait has a lot of elasticity to it, but it will tear up as well. So it’s not like Elaztech or other TPE type materials that stretch and never tear. But that also means you can do a little more with colors, rigging is a lot easier, but the action is still very good. However, the only downside is that these baits do tear up. Their softness, and salt content and action garner a lot of bites but also make them susceptible to tearing.
I actually found that o-rings didn’t keep them intact any better than just running a hook through the bait did. So I just fished them on hooks without an O-ring. But I found one way I really liked hooking them that I will discuss in a minute.
VERY GOOD COLOR OPTIONS
The Perfection Lures Wacky Worm features some very good versions of the popular colors. Not all green pumpkins or watermelon red baits look the same. And I’ve seen some pretty poor versions of both in soft plastics. So I’m a bit of a stickler you can say for colors. There are certain ways translucents, flake and hues just seem to work better than others. I never have been able to explain it. But I think it’s part of why colors like Junebug are great in one area of the country but not others. So I was very happy with how good these colors turned out in these Wacky Worms. I’ve had a bunch of success on Green Pumpkin Violet, Sungill and Watermelon Red.
DYNAMITE WACKY RIG OPTION
So I fished the Wacky Worms this spring as wacky rigs of course. And caught some really nice bass doing that. In fact, my biggest bass I’ve hooked this year fell for a Wacky Worm skipped under a dock walkway on a lake in Arkansas. The bass when it came up on the surface looked to be a 10-pounder. I started horsing on him when I realized how big he was and how hard he was charging under the dock and she ran full steam ahead and broke 17 pound line on a walkway post like I wasn’t even there. A heart breaker for sure. But still it doesn’t change the fact that my biggest bass this year would have been on a Perfection Lures Wacky Worm.
MY FAVORITE WAY TO FISH IT AND EXPERIENCES
While I like it as a wacky rig, I’ve talked before about a better way to fish soft stickbaits in a video I did years ago. The video featured a weighted finesse hook. I use the 6/0 hook most of the time because it puts the weigh just about where the middle of the worm is. This means the bait will still fall more like wacky rig. But it can also be a pitching bait. I’ve pitched this setup in bushes and caught bass that wouldn’t bite a jig.
I started rigging the Perfection Lures bait with this hook and really caught the fish well and more importantly, I got a lot more fish out of a bait. So I think a lot of times anglers discount baits because it does this thing or that thing with their normal setup. But usually its just a matter of not only finding a new bait but finding the exact best way to rig it that maximizes its action.
So for me I felt like these Wacky Worms had more action but they were coming off on every fish. So I found a better hook and then I was getting quality fish, and catching a bunch of bass on one pack of baits. So for me these stickbaits get a thumbs up. Yes they are soft but that softness gives them extra action and natural looking appeal in the water. So I’ve got a stash now in my boat because I throw stickbaits a lot more than just spring (i.e. it’s my main dock pitching bait this time of year).
You can find the Perfection Lures David Dudley Wacky Worm at these online retailers:
