Karen Davis was on a mission for her kids, and I was the target. "My son and daughter want to learn to fish, and you gotta teach me so I can teach them," said Karen, a family friend.

So one afternoon, I took Karen and her kids out on our boat dock for a quick on-the-water lesson. I rigged a spinning outfit with a Little Mac swimming plastic worm and gave her a few seconds' instruction.

Her first errant cast sent the lure straight up 20 feet, the line landing in a coiled heap beside her on the pier. She laughed at her missed cast. Her daughter kicked the lure in the water, and I watched it corkscrew into the river depths — and down the open, waiting mouth of a huge bass.

I told Karen to quickly wind the reel handle, and she promptly barbed the fish that was lurking in the dock shade under our feet.

What followed is kind of a blur. There was a lot of shouting, arm and hand waving, stomping of feet, and plenty of protest splashing from the bass. But somehow she battled the largemouth to the surface, and I landed a 6-pounder for her.

Karen and her kids are now dedicated anglers, fishing at almost every opportunity, and they're especially devoted to swimming plastic worms.

Despite regular tales of such catches, there still is great reluctance by veteran bass fishermen to use rigged swimming worms. The turn-off most modern bass anglers have about swimming plastic worms is that the lures look much like the original rubber worms of 40 years ago. Further, contemporary bass fishermen have preconceived notions about what today's plastic worm should look like, and the bulk of those sophisticated anglers don't want hooks, leaders and swivels rigged to their worms.

You can't really blame such fishermen, because when you hold a spinning or swimming soft plastic worm in your hands, you're largely unimpressed. In fact, until an angler is told otherwise, a swimming plastic worm looks like an ordinary plastic worm that's warped from summer heat.

Shaped more like a road-kill snake than a modern, high-tech plastic lure, a "swimmin' worm" is not the sort of artificial an average "bassin' man" has come to love and respect. In truth, a swimming worm — with its goofy curved body, rigged hooks and outlandish colors — is more likely to be seen hanging from the end of a spin-cast rod owned by a kid in New Jersey, rather than coveted by a Ricky Clunn "wanna be" in a $20,000 bass boat.

In fact, the slow tantalizing spin of a Z-shaped swimming worm is so rarely seen today by bass on America's hard-pressured lakes and streams, that its action often is more appealing to fish than traditional plastic worms. In fact, because swimming plastic worms have their own, inherent, built-in actions, they can't be fished incorrectly. Indeed, anyone who can cast and retrieve a swimming worm will catch bass with the lure — as Karen Davis and her children will attest.

The swimming worm is so out-of-step with modern plastic worm shapes, designs and actions, that the majority of today's competent bass anglers have no idea what these remarkable bass-catching lures are all about. And that is much of the fish-appealing beauty of the swimming, spinning, swirling plastic worm. Because it's not used much by the bulk of America's bassin' brigade, most fish have never seen the lure's remarkably different action. So behind that curled, broken-back shape and rigged hook harness, there is much good to be said about swimming plastic worms.

The unique, purposefully-molded C-, S- or Z-shape of a swimming plastic worm causes the lure to spin erratically as it's retrieved. Some worms spin in tight, fast circles. Other designs spiral in wide, slow ovals. They spin so easily, and have such inherent round-and-round action, that they must be fished with a quality ball-bearing swivel tied into the line ahead of the lure. Without a swivel they'll hopelessly tangle fishing line in just a few casts, and that makes for fouled lines on reels and rod guides.

Swimming or spinning soft plastic worms are available in a mind-boggling array of colors, many in wild hues that are especially productive for clear-water bass. They vary in size from small 3-inch models that tempt smallmouths and even chunky panfish to giant 12-inchers that score on oversize Florida and California bass.

Most swimming worms are rigged with tandem hooks. A worm typically has two or three hooks buried inside its soft plastic body, the number and size of the hooks is determined by the length and thickness of the worm. Lures 6 inches or longer often have three single hooks, rigged in tandem, which make for sure barbing of even light-striking bass. On such a long worm there will be a hook at the head, one in its center, and a third hook at the tail.

To facilitate good swimming action, often a smaller, lighter wire hook is used at the lure's end. The little tail hook frequently is the one that barbs reluctant, hard-to-catch bass in clear water or hard-pressured lakes and rivers. These fish are well-known "nippers," the kind of shy bass that just nip the tails of standard-rig plastic worms without becoming barbed. Tandem lure hooks are connected by 10- to 30-pound test monofilament fishing line, with the line and hook shanks molded inside the plastic worm body.

Most rigged worms have monofilament extending from the forward hook, out the nose of the lure, forming a leader 1 to 3 feet long. Leader ends are tied in a loop, which can be easily attached to a ball-bearing snap swivel that's tied to the line end of the fishing outfit. Hook bends and points are exposed out the side of the worm body for sure barbing of bass. Weedless and non-weedless hook models are available in different swimming worm styles.

One major plus for rigged, swimming worms, is the ease with which they can be set in a bass' mouth. If you've had trouble burying the barb in bass that struck a plastic worm having a hook point hidden in the lure's plastic body Texas style, then you'll love rigged swimming worms. It takes a solid, no nonsense hook-set to drive a large 2/0 to 5/0 hook rigged Texas style through a tough plastic worm body and into the gristle of a big bass' maw. But only a sharp snap of the rod sets the smaller exposed hooks a typical swimming worm possesses.

No lure is better suited for bass in shallow, grassy water than a swimming worm rigged with weedless hooks. Fished without a weight, such a swimming worm can be cast a long way with spinning tackle. By using a stop-and-go retrieve around, over and through weeds, lily pads, stumps, brush tops, etc., a spinning, spiraling, swimming worm unnerves thin-water bass. A bullet-shaped slip weight also can be rigged onto a swimming worm's leader to get the lure deep, thereby burrowing weedless through grass, brush and other tangles.

A small swimming worm is one of my favorite soft plastic artificials for use in strong river current. The lure is especially deadly for smallmouths. Most of the time I'll fish a 4-inch swimming worm and attach just enough split shot onto the lure's leader to get it down where bass hold. An upstream cast is normally best, and the lure is fished slowly as it swings deep in current — much like how a fly fisherman works a nymph or streamer for trout. No action need be imparted to a swinging, swimming worm, because river current activates the lure in a spiraling, swirling fashion most smallmouths go wild over.

Last summer on Idaho's Snake River, I had great success on smallmouths "tight-lining" 4-inch, all-brown swimming worms. Once, from a single large boulder, I landed 11 smallmouths to 3 pounds by swinging swimming worms around it. I'd cast 20 yards upstream of the boulder and allow the worm to spiral and swirl into the Snake's depths. By retrieving line a bit, or moving my rod tip left or right, I could direct the spinning worm drifting in the current right under the boulder's overhangs where smallmouths were stacked like a pack of wolves guarding their lair.

A Carolina-rigged swimming worm fished on a 4-foot leader ahead of a heavy slip sinker is one of the greatest "searching" bass lures of all time. I fish it from a slow-moving boat, either pulled along by an electric motor, or when making a controlled wind drift over deep structure.

The lure is cast out, allowed to sink to the bottom, then the boat is moved along humps, channel edges, weed lines, drop-offs, rock piles, etc. The lure is fished almost under the boat, in a nearly vertical presentation. Worked this way I can keep a close watch on my fathometer to keep the lure in precise position on, say, a deep rocky finger or projection, or right on a weedy drop-off. Sometimes when fish are spotted on my fathometer suspended off structure, I stop the boat's movement, and actively shake the Carolina rig.

This causes the heavy sinker in the rig to thump bottom loudly, which sends up bottom sediment that can draw bass. This also imparts up-and-down movement to the swimming worm, making it spiral, spin, swirl and wiggle. A remarkable number of big, deep bass have fallen for that tactic, including an 8-pound largemouth I caught last autumn in South Carolina's Santee-Cooper Reservoir.

Interestingly, fishing the same way with an outsize 12-inch, all-black swimming Little Mac worm, I caught a 13-pound striped bass from the same reservoir structure the day after I caught the heavy black bass. Two bass weighing 21 pounds in two days is impressive for any lure fished by any technique. But I've learned not to be too surprised by the size, number and type bass swimming worms produce. It's simply a lure that rarely fails, in bass water coast to coast.