Fishing A Live Worm

The most popular bait for any type of fish, has to be the worm. Honestly, what's the first thing that comes to your mind, when someone mentions fishing or fishing bait? That's right, the good old worm. Whether you use worms or not, worms are the first thing that pops into your mind. Not only that, but when you were a kid, worms are more than likely what you used for bait. Even if you have since become a flea flicker, when you were a kid, worms were more than likely employed as bait. The interesting thing is that many anglers either stop using worms all together or continue to use worms as bait, but just like they did when they were a child.

My mentor used to call it "using a worm ball". You know what I'm talking about, right? Using a fairly large hook, say a size 4 hook, and threading a worm onto the hook. Or simply hooking the worm over and over again, thus creating a worm ball. This is how we all did it as a child fishing for sunfish at the local pond, but were adults now. My mentor began tying and using gang hooks for his worm fishing.

What's a gang hook? A gang hook, or actually a 'set' of gang hooks, is simply two small hooks tied in tandem. He used to use size 10 hooks, which is what I prefer, but up to size 6 is tolerable. For those of you who don't know, a size 10 hook is pretty freakin' small! But, as flea flickers have demonstrated for years, big fish can be caught using small hooks. A set of gang hooks is by far the most natural way to present a worm. Gang hooks literally make worm fishing into a viable way for adults to fish a worm. Worm fishing with gang hooks becomes every bit as 'technical' a type of fishing as flea flicking is made out to be.

So where do you get these gang hooks? Simple. You can tie them yourself or you can go somewhere like JRWfishing and buy them. The choice is yours. If you want to tie them yourself, it's fairly easy to learn, just do a little knot research and you'll be on your way.

The bottom line is that gang hooks are the only way to fish a live worm. Using a set of gang hooks the worm appears as natural as if you just throw it in the water. Especially with size 10 gang hooks, the hooks are all but invisible! What do you think this does for the amount of bites you get? And what's great is that you'll get more bites from the larger, more wary fish. As we all know small fish have no problem biting a "worm ball". They don't know anything about being caught. It's the larger, more seasoned and wary fish that we're really interested in, right? I know I am. Gang hooks will help you catch more and larger fish, especially when fishing a live worm.