The centipede, made by Zoom, has its roots in "French fry" style soft plastics, so-called because they resemble a crinkle-cut fry. Back in the day, this 4-inch piece of flat, bumpy, soft plastic was most popularly dragged on a 3- or 4-foot leader behind a heavy weight as the business end of a Carolina rig.
One of the last crinkle-cut fry baits left, Zoom's centipede is the easiest to find at well-stocked tackle shops.
As noted by Dave Mull, a kayak angler and writer, "One of the cool things about being older is seeing how certain lures fall out of popularity but then make a resurgence. That's certainly the case with the centipede," he said.
"When the Carolina rig fell out of fashion, so did the centipede," he continued. "Necessity is the mother of invention, but in an angler's world, it's more accurate to say running out of one kind of lure can lead to trying another that's similar. Sometimes the replacement proves to be more effective than the original."
Such was the case for young Cooper Nutting of Grand Rapids, Michigan. A bass angler talented enough to earn a bass-fishing scholarship to Auburn University in Alabama, Nutting had run out of a favorite Bass Pro Shops worm he liked for wacky rigging, so he tried a Zoom centipede, instead. And, as you may have guessed, the result was so good that a wacky-rigged centipede took up permanent residence in his arsenal.
"I think it's the rate it falls that makes it so effective in shallow water," said Nutting, who puts a light-wire hook through the middle of the bait, so that slight twitches can make both ends wiggle. However, he usually doesn't twitch it, instead allowing it to sink slowly to the bottom.
"I want it to soak a while," he noted. "I might give it some real light twitches, but mostly I just want it to sink slowly. The No. 1 size Neko hook from VMC that he uses is lightweight and doesn't speed the fall.
Mull watched Cooper catch several fish right at the end of a kayak bass tournament one summer (enough to beat him) and couldn't see what he was using until afterward, when he asked him. The young fella was forthcoming about his wacky-rigged centipede, explaining that it had saved more than one fishing session for him.
Said Mull, "I don't know what fish find so attractive about a bumpy piece of soft plastic, but it must have some intrinsic appeal. After editing a story about how effective a centipede is as a finesse presentation when Texas-rigged, I gave it a try. Initial results were so good that a centipede on a 1/0 Matzuo hook with a sliding, 1/8-ounce bullet sinker in front of it nearly always is now tied on one of my rods whenever I go bass fishing."
The writer went on to note that it's an easy lure to use and catches fish of all sizes..."a great one to tie on especially for someone new to bass fishing," he said. "I like to throw it upstream and reel up slack, while the current pushes the lure back to me. Since the hook point is stuck in the plastic, it doesn't often snag. In lakes, it's a good lure for easing through weed beds, too."
As a result of Mull's success with fishing the centipede this way, he started replacing the standard 4-inch finesse worms on split-shot rigs with centipedes, which proved successful.
In one kayak tournament on Muskegon Lake, Mull needed two more fish with just a half-hour to go and caught both on a split-shot centipede rig, tossing it across a wind-blown point. It was enough for a third-place finish. A couple days later, in a night tournament, he caught all four of his fish on a bait from the same package. Besides catching the big bass of the tournament, he finished third among 20 competitors, with just four fish.
There is one final way to rig a centipede, as described to Mull by Mark Zona, who told him about how a flat-sinking, weightless centipede provokes bites from neutral bass. Zona had learned to rig the centipede Tex-posed on a 5/0 extra-wide-gap hook and fish it without additional weight.
About a month later, Mull had a chance to try a Tex-posed centipede on Lake Superior...before the start of the bass spawning season. The local giant smallmouths were everywhere but were ignoring most lures until Mull and some of his buddies started throwing the centipede. The fish couldn't resist that slow-sinking soft plastic, and they caught lots of 'em, including some trophy-sized specimens.
"So, if you want to try a simple lure for bass, try a centipede," concluded Mull. "It's one of those old-school lures that's still around and still catches fish."
No comments:
Post a Comment