Everyone knows that there are earthworms, earthworms or dung worms. Some people know about the crawls crawling out on the paths after the rain. Fishermen know about Californian worms. Vermiologists who study earthworms know everything about worms, except that, in addition to living worms, there are artificial worms. What is it – an artificial worm and why is it needed.
An artificial worm is a bait that resembles a worm in its shape, the body length of which is at least ten times its thickness (but usually more than about two times). The material for their manufacture is almost always silicone. Such trompe l’oeil worms are both a very exact copy of a real living worm, and some abstract entity, only vaguely reminiscent of it. It’s the same with flowers – it can be a color that is as close to natural as possible, so any other, completely not inherent in a worm, including poisonous acid, and even with sparkles. The general rule when choosing a color is the same as for other artificial baits – the more turbid the water and the more cloudy the weather, the brighter the worm should be (bright red, for example, or lemon yellow, or poisonous green chartreuse), and the water the more transparent and the sun is brighter, the more modest and dim (brown, for example, gray, purple or black). The modern variety of worms of all imaginable and unimaginable colors and colors is, rather, not a tribute to the finickyness of fish, but a certain way to increase sales, because no one will go to the store with a claim that the capricious fish did not deign to peck at the purchased worm of experimental colors.
If, in principle, it is clear with the colors – a great variety of everything very different, then with the sizes the situation is much more detailed, and almost all manufacturers are more or less conservative and do not particularly experiment. The main (or average) size of a silicone worm of any manufacturer is fifteen centimeters (and if you translate into inches, you get six, because one inch is a little more than two and a half centimeters). For regular fishing and the average fish, this is quite enough. If something more serious is supposed to be caught, then the worm, of course, can be larger – and twenty centimeters (that is, eight inches), and even ten inches – that is, twenty-five centimeters. If ultralight is supposed to be used, then it is quite possible to do with small ten-centimeter (that is, four inches long) worms. The standard thickness of a standard fifteen-centimeter worm is about seven millimeters, that is, the thickness is about twenty of its lengths. Of course, there are both thicker and thinner worms, but the most frequent deviation of the worm from the standard one occurs in the direction of increasing its thickness and decreasing its length – that is, in the direction of a well-fed shorty.
The shape can also be different, and it is not at all necessary – a straight tube. The animation of the worm depends on the shape (or rather the presence and shape of its tail). The worm can be straight, or it can have a tail – needle, blade or even twister, it can have ribs or cilia, or it can not have them – there are many options that pleases modern industry. But still, the worm is a passive bait, and the fish are attracted, first of all, not by their own game, but by the way of wiring.
All in all, a silicone worm is a great bait that fish likes and does not miss, especially when eating silicone is edible.