Tube baits: a hollow body and tentacles, and two ways to rig it

Why hollow changes everything

Almost every other soft plastic is solid. A tube is a hollow cylinder, closed at the nose, split into tentacles at the tail.

That hollow body traps water and air, and it makes the bait unstable as it sinks. Instead of dropping straight, a tube glides and spirals — it circles downward in a wide helix.

That fall is the entire attraction. It looks like something injured and out of control, it covers a wider area than a straight drop, and it takes longer, which keeps the bait in the strike zone. The overwhelming majority of tube bites come on the fall.

The tentacles do the rest, waving continuously with almost no movement from you — the same quality that makes a Ned rig work when it is doing nothing.

Two ways to rig one, and they are different lures

The internal head is the traditional method and produces the spiral. A specialised tube jig head goes in nose-first and the hook eye pokes out through the side of the body. Our jig heads page covers head selection, though tube-specific heads are a distinct shape.

Texas rigging treats a tube like any other soft plastic — offset worm hook, point buried, as our Texas rig page describes. You lose most of the spiral and gain the ability to fish it through cover.

Start with the internal head. The spiral is the reason to own tubes at all.

Why smallmouth eat them

A tube on the bottom looks remarkably like a crayfish, and crayfish are a large part of the smallmouth diet on rocky water.

The imitation is not just visual. Dragged along gravel, the tentacles splay and the body tips nose-down, which is very close to a crayfish backing away with its claws raised.

That is why our smallmouth setup has one in it, and why tube fishing is most strongly associated with rocky rivers and clear northern lakes.

How to fish it

Cast and let it fall on a semi-slack line. This is the important part. A tight line pulls the tube toward you and kills the spiral. Slack line lets it circle.

Watch the line, not the rod. Bites on the fall show as the line twitching, jumping, or simply stopping before it should have reached the bottom.

Then drag, do not hop. Once it is down, move it slowly along the bottom with the rod, then pause. A crayfish scuttles and stops; it does not leap.

Set the hook on anything unusual. Tube bites are frequently just weight.

Color, briefly

Green pumpkin covers most water and most conditions. Watermelon in clear water, something darker in stained.

Berkley publishes seven colors for this tube — green pumpkin, watermelon red, watermelon vapor, breen green, goby magic, lucky penny and white — and most of them are variations on those themes. Our lure color page explains why this category matters less than depth or presentation.

Gear that suits them

A medium or medium-light spinning rod with a fast tip, and light line. You are feeling for subtle bites at range and you need enough tip sensitivity to detect a line twitch.

Fluorocarbon is the usual choice: it sinks, which helps keep contact with a bait on the bottom, and it is abrasion-resistant against the rock where tubes are most often fished. Our fluorocarbon page covers the trade.