Rod and reel choice:
My texas rig rod is a 5'6" berkley Don Ivino doodlin rod (they don't make it any more so I will describe it) they way I fish a worm is commonly called doodlin or shaking. The rod has a pretty soft tip and the soft tip is key for doodlin, as it allows you to shake your rod tip without moving the worm towards you a whole lot. It also as a fairly stiff backbone. With the 5'6" rod you loose a lot of hooksetting leverage/power but I can compensate with a good and powerful hookset(winding up), one thing I do to get power on my hookset is I reel down and simultaneously take a step forward with my left foot, then I launch backwards and set. I get more bites using this rod and I figure, I would rather have to work a little harder on the hookset and get more bites than have a easy hookset and get less bites. For the reel, right now I'm using a shimano curado and I believe it has a super slow retrieve like 4.3:1 or something. This stops me from working the worm too fast.
My drop shot rod is a team daiwa tdx dropshot rod(this rod is amazing) much like my Don Ivino rod but it is 6'6"(it also works well for texas rigged worms.) They don't sell it at basspro or cablellas but tackleware house has them they are $190 I believe( and well worth it). It has a extra fast taper and a light tip and is great for light line. It has plenty of fishing fighting power, and the grip is the most comfortable grip I have ever used. I believe having a quality rod is FAR more important than a top of the line reel when you a worm fishing. The main thing I want in a worm reel is a slow retrieve.
Working your worm:
Shaking is unlike "hopping/popping" a worm, while shaking you are trying to limit how far your bait moves towards you. I'm right handed so I cup my left hand on the left side of the reel, and my right hand cups the right side but I place it more to the front of the reel. I also hold my line between my right index finger and thumb while I shake the worm to gain more feel.
I try to cast past the piece of cover/structure I want to fish. I try to have the worm enter the water gently but that is not as important if you can cast past you target by 3 to 5 feet. Once the worm hits the water I immediately strip out 6 to 8 feet of line so the worm falls straight down. If I'm fishing deeper water I strip out more. Because your line is slack on the fall it is very important to watch your line and there a few things to look for, line moving left or right, increased fall rate, your line "jumps", or flat out stopping. If you know you have cast into 10 feet of water but your worm seemed to stop at 5ft that could mean two things and they both are good. 1: a fish has picked it up. Or 2: it is in good cover. If this happens I immediately reel down and get a little tension on the line(but not too much because you don't want to let the fish know you are there). Once I have slight tension I lift my rod tip really slowly to "feel" it. If it feels mushy or it pulls back I set immediately because 9 times out of 10 its a fish. If it kinda just stops and I know it's a piece of wood, I hand strip out some more line and get my worm to the bottom, because, more than likely it is overhanging a limb. Sometimes a light shake will be needed to get your worm to the bottom. Once my worm is on the bottom, I put my rod tip to the 9 o'clock position and I hold my reel as described before (hold it firmly as well) and start shaking your rod tip. To get a good "shake you need to do 1 of 2 things, wedge the butt of your rod in the top of your armpit or press it to the center of your chest. What you are trying to do is keep the butt of you rod from moving. This will help get more action to your worm. Your rod tip should be whipping either back and forth or sometimes it will start going into a circle, you only want your tip to be moving 4 or 5 inches. You need to do this on semi tight line, just enough slack so you are not actually dragging the worm too much. Your hands/arms should be shaking like you were really cold and were shivering. As you shake, your worm will inch ever so slowly forward and that is what you want. Once you rod get to about 11 or 12 o'clock stop shaking for a second and let the worm sit still. Then put your rod back to 9 o'clock reel in the slack, check for fish(they will usually hit when it stops so reel down to your lure slowly and you will have a better chance of feeling the bite, then repeat.
When you get you worm into cover its time to really slow down. I shake and shake and drag in very small increments. Once I feel my lure touching structure I gently lift my rod tip so my worm is on the bottom of the limb, then I shake a little more and try not to pull it over the limb yet...pause and let it fall back down. Then raise it slowly again to the limb, pause then gently edge it over and either follow it down with you rod or strip some line out if it has a way to go. Once it stops check for a fish then start shaking again. Sometimes your worm won't go over the top of the limbs/sticks very easily, if this happens I let the worm drop a couple of inches and then give it a little bit harder and faster jerk to clear the stick up. Sometimes the action of the worm shooting quickly over the cover can induce a strike as well.
This shaking technique is great for wood, brushpiles, rocks, points...pretty much any type of cover and it also works on bare banks too. It is definitely a finesse technique because of how slow you are fishing. But you can use worms of all sizes and you can really pick apart bassy looking cover and land some hogs.
Always use as light of a bullet weight as possible. I almost always use a 1/8oz weight and I almost religiously use a painted weight to match the color of my worm.
Hook size will depend on the size of your worm but a 2/0 or 3/0 is good for worms that are 8" or less. My favorite hooks are the roboworm rebarb hooks. They are the best for holding worms made of softer plastics.
Ok now for the worms..I make a lot of my own worms because there is not a whole lot of selection in Hawaii and it is always a bonus to catch a fish on something you made. I usually fish a 6 or 7 inch straight tail finesse worm. I add plastic softener to make them soft and I do this for 3 reasons.
1. The softer the worm the more it wiggle when you shake it.
2. The hook penetrates through the worm easier(but can cause more snags unfortunately..but fishing plastic worms is cheap)
3. Probably the least obvious reason is, if you miss a fish or weren't sure if it was a fish you can actually see the teeth marks that will be streaked down the worm...and they usually start right behind the hook. If there are no little tears/marks on your worm it was either not a fish or you actually felt the bass spit the worm out.. and that brings me to my next portion.
I always use a fish attractant/scent when fishing a plastic worm (or any softplastics for that matter). Bites can be very subtle or not felt at all. Anything than can lead to the bass holding onto the lure longer is good. Salt is a basses favorite taste, I put salt in all my bags of worm. Unfortunately is doesn't stay on very long once it hits the water and that is why I use scent oil or spray as well. The larger smarter fish have perfected eating and many of them hit much less aggressively than the little guys and you often wont feel anything. More often than not when I'm not 100 percent sure I have a fish on, I set and they are usually the bigger fish. The fish that hit hard or cause the dink dink dink as I call it are usually not as big. This isn't anything that is set is stone..just something I have noticed over the years. Sometimes I get the dink dink dink with the bigger ones too, just not as often.
Worm color:
For the most part I use dark colored worms from light brownish to dark black, most of the worms I pour are two toned and I prefer two toned worms, and I think the bass do too. My favorite color worm is one my old tournament partner made, he calls it a purple weenie but there isn't a whole lot of purple in it. It has 3 colors, the bottom is a dark brown (he calls it S#!+ brown), it has a small dark purple bloodline and the top is a translucent lime greenish color with purple flake. If I had one color plastic worm to fish it would be this color. But I will not go worm fishing without some junebug or black grape(great night color) worms. I do really well at lake wilson with junebug and have caught fish all from california to florida on junebug, it's a great color for stained water. So I have talked about color a little bit but I also wanted to say that I find color to be the least important thing while fishing a worm. My general rule is if the water is clear I use light/translucent colors and if the water is stained I use dark colors. Also if fishing during low light or night I use dark colors. At Lake Havasu we would use light blue translucent worms or pink because the water is really clear in some parts...you can see the bottom 30ft down but you can't see the fish until they bite and you set..then you see them flash.
If I'm not using the worms I make I prefer roboworms. I feel like they are the best mass produced worm on the market, and are very similar to the worms I pour myself. Kalins is also a good worm manufacture, I think it is Gary Yamamotos Son's company.
And now for line:
I don't have a set test or type I use but will explain my choices for certain situations.
My preferred test for mono is 8lb, I feel like it is strong enough for most situations and I can feel the worm better, I generally don't like using more than 10lb mono either. In really clear water 6lb mono is sometimes needed
I've tried using flouro but I break off a lot on the hook set. I think I get more bites with the flouro especially in clearer water but that does me no good if I'm breaking fish off on the hooksets.
Flouro is nice because it sinks and is more sensitive. But I find it less abrassion resitent then mono. So if you want to use flouro I would go with 12lb. Or I just need to find a better quality flouro.
I really would prefer to fish braid on all of my worm rods but in finesse/clear water situations I don't like it and feel less confident with it, fortunately Lake Wilson always has a nice stain to it so braids are fine. If the water is stained I always opt for braid. I use to prefer 20lb fireline because I find it the most sensitive of the braids, I have recently switched to power pro and I am starting to like it more, not quite as sensitive as fireline but it casts better and the line is more round which keeps it from digging into my spool on hookests. I use 20 or 30lb braid. Before I mentioned that I hold the line between my finger and thumb, anything less then 20lbs slides into the crease on my index finger and gives me a nasty and painful cut when I set the hook.
If I think of more info about fishing plastic worms I will post and will be happy to answer any questions. I also apologize for typos and spelling, I wrote this on my cell phone and I also had surgery today and am on some heavy pain relievers. Maybe that's why I'm giving my secrets away
I was lucky and was taught a lot of tips and tricks on how to fish a plastic when I was 14, and I know for a fact if I wasn't taught some of the subtleties of plastic worm fishing, I wouldn't have figured them out on my own.
