The All-Terrain Tube Bait!

Hey, folks. Glenn May here at BassResource.com. And if you've watched my videos for a while now, you know that I don't like to have one-trick pony tackle in my boat. Now, what I mean by that, the thing is say, for example, O-rings for wacky rigging or specialty jig hooks, things like that that just take up space. Certain specialty weights, specialty type of tackle that you can only use when you're doing a certain kind of fishing, for the most part, I don't like. I like versatility. I like to make things work for a variety of things, for me. That way it's more useful and I'm not carrying a whole bunch of stuff in the boat.

So, what I want to talk to you a little bit about is what I used to have for two baits, this right here. What I used to do...there's a type of glider weight that you can get, that weight that you put inside of this that gives it an internal weight. The problem is that it's a specialty weight. You only got one use for it and it takes up weight and space in my tackle box.

Well, one day, I was putting them away, and my wife saw this and I'm not gonna say she's the originator of this idea but it's a brilliant idea. But she was looking at the drop shot weight, that's one of these right here, a little drop shot weight. She was looking at that and said, "You know what? I think I got an idea. Why don't we put that on the inside of the tube?" Well, I thought about it and this is what we came up with.

So, I got a... This is a hook. This is a high-performance hook. This has got a wire clip on here that holds the bait in place. I got a link to it in the bottom of the description so you know what this is. Well, what you wanna do is there's a little opening in here and you want that hook to go right through. Well, the problem when you first get these out of the package is it's hard to get them to get in there, it's very tight. So, once you get them in there what you first wanna do is pull them apart. I'm literally pulling like that. Now, when you do that the hole...it's hard to tell but it's a little bit bigger. A little bit bigger and that's all you need. Now, the hook can go in here really easy. See, I'm not forcing it. Now, it just slides right in, okay? That's what you needed to do. Pull it apart more if you need to but that opens it up just a little bit.

Now, what I do is I take a little bit of scent here, it's a gel scent. I just put a little bit on just for good measure, just a little bit on there. What that does is this gives a little bit of lubrication. That way I can fit it in here a lot easier. I just smeared on the inside of this tube just like this and I flip it around. So, I've got... this is the wire part first and put that in here and now that lubrication makes it really easy. I just stick it all the way up. Now, it's at the very end of it. Now, you need to thread the hook through that hole that we made. Hole is right here. First thing you wanna look at is how is this gonna sit on a bait. It's gonna sit like this. Notice the shank, the angle of the shank. Your hook point has got to go in at that angle. That's critical to making this work right, which is perfect because when you bring your hook pointed like that, it goes right into that wire right there. I just felt that. I don’t know if you heard a little click when it went in, but…and you bring it through, flip it around here. Now, you've got this little wire, bring it up past the wire just like so. It's a tight fit sometimes. There you go. And then you just clap the wire right on the shank of the hook. There just like that. See, it holds it in place now. Now, you just need the hook to go right in and lay flat on the top just like so. Now, you got yourself a weightless tube bait with an internal weight.

Now, why do you wanna do that? Why is that important? Well, if you've done the other ways of rigging them with a jig, with an exposed hook, with a weight in the front or a say, for example, a bullet sinker, the problem with that is they tend to get hung up, especially in rocks, or wedge into rocks, they’ll wedge into the crooks of branches, weeds, in the little V-part of lily pads. They'll get hung up all the time.

When you've got a rig like this, now you've got yourself an all-terrain four-wheel drive vehicle of tube base. You can literally throw this anywhere and almost every time it's gonna come back out. What that means is that now you can go in where the bass are hiding and dig them out. You can throw it into thicker cover, into thicker bush, go in where the big fish are, get more bites, you're gonna catch more fish and you're gonna be more successful with tube baits. I hope that helps. For more tips and tricks like this is, visit  BassResource.com.