Bass anglers across North America have theories as to why soft plastic round balls with spikes are catching so many bass this year.
Some say these “urchins” work because they look like zooplankton that grown bass remember eating when they were tiny little fry. Some say that this ball with spikes looks like a small school of minnows all eating the same round chunk of food. Others think it appears to be a swimming crayfish. My friend Pete Johnson thinks that when you fish them like a jerkbait, they mimic a bluegill that pauses, its fins all quivering.
Adrian Bulldog Bass Team member Pete Johnson fishes urchins with a heavy-gauge single straight shank hook as he throws these lures on heavy baitcasting gear.
I think bass think these spiky orbs are nightmarish space aliens and, like the Blues Brothers, the fish are on a “mission from God” to kill every one of these freaky critters.
Prove me or any of the other theories wrong.
Who cares why fish bite these weird things that look like an artist’s rendition of a Covid virus? Bass of all sizes attack them brutishly. So do pike, which is unfortunate because you can still pay more than $20 for one of the original Hideup Coikes, made in Japan for about 20 years. Last year, big-time pros in the U.S. started winning national tournaments with these spikeballs, and that has continued in a big way.
Urchinmania has swept the nation.
Prices are coming down as more companies make and sell their own versions. For instance, Frankenstein Baits in Harrison, Michigan, makes urchins called Da Fuzz, and at this writing two-Fuzz sets cost $12. Smitty’s Sport Shop in Battle Creek stocks them.
As you might imagine, due to the initial high price and the fact that these things look like no kind of resident prey a bass would ever encounter, many anglers resisted even trying them. One such old school guy was Jason Christie, a 52-year-old Oklahoma bass pro famous for winning big tournaments by casting spinnerbaits and flipping jigs. In May, Christie beat 97 other Bassmaster Elite anglers—with an urchin.
“I said I would never own one,” Christie told Dave Mercer on the Mercer Podcast. But after the top two finishers at a Bassmaster Elite event at Santee Cooper caught their fish on urchin baits, Christie had a change of heart. He bought one at a big box store near his home in Dry Creek, Oklahoma.
“I actually made my cameraman pick it up and carry it to the register,” Christie told Mercer.
He tried the urchin for about 20 minutes at the end of a brief trip to a local reservoir—and caught three bass. He kept that one tied on in his rod locker and proceeded to win the next Bassmaster Elite tournament, which was on North Carolina’s Pasquotank River. He caught all but one of his fish over the four-day contest on the urchin bait.
Christie rigged the urchin bait on a double frog hook, and as of this writing, double frog hooks have been selling out at most online retailers. When the urchins first emerged, many anglers rigged them like a Neko rig, skin-hooking the hook and adding a nail weight. A weight of some kind is essential as the material used to make these baits is buoyant. In fact, Hideup reportedly designed the original Coikes as surface lures.
Other rigging options include a treble hook, one hook in the lure, two ready to hook a bass. Some anglers have found a Jika rig with a weight affixed to the hook eyelet works for scuttling this bait along the bottom. Some jig heads with long hook shanks offer another option.
Who knows how anglers will rig these baits a year from now? Bass anglers nationwide seemingly invent new methods daily. I can speak to a couple rigs that worked on the day I first tried an urchin bait in June. I fished with aspiring bass pro Pete Johnson of Rockford, Michigan, who is currently a member of the Adrian College bass fishing team. Pete picked me up in his Triton bass boat at a small lake’s public pier. And we proceeded to catch a bunch of largemouths, mostly shallow around docks.
Pete had rigged his 2K Jigs’ Urchin Star (2kjigs.com) on a straight shank 3/0 bass hook, run right through the middle of the ball of the bait. The hook’s eyelet almost disappeared. That left enough hook gap to get the point in a fish’s lip. To make the hook ride upright and to help the urchin sink, he stuck a small tungsten nail weight under the hook shank. I did pretty much the same, but only had a pack of Gamakatsu 3/0 EWG hooks and that model worked just fine. I added a 5/64-ounce tungsten weight and I caught several bass on it.
My other was a drop-shot rig with an urchin I bought on Temu. This bait had a much smaller ball but the same length of spikes as the other lures we had. I stuck a No. 2 Gamakatsu Stinger hook (a long-shanked model mostly used for tying streamer flies) through the center of the bait and slid the urchin right up to the knot. With a 1/8 ounce tungsten drop-shot weight I bought at motleyfishing.com, I cast into shallow water and kept the lure below the surface on the retrieve. Several bass ate it.
Surprisingly, these urchins don’t need a slow, let-it-fall presentation to work. For sure, a fish will hit one when it splashes down and slowly sinks, but you can work this lure like you might retrieve a jerkbait. The classic “jerk-jerk-pause” retrieve works well. It helps to watch the line because many strikes come when you have some slack in it and are letting it waft down towards bottom. It’s worth mentioning here that when retrieving an urchin with the hook sticking out of the rear of the bait, you pick up very few weeds—the spikes seem to act like weed guards.
Most of these urchin lures are made of thermoplastic elastomer (TPE), which is much tougher than the liquid vinyl plastisol used for traditional soft plastic worms and creature baits. Fish can’t easily tear TPE off the hook, which somewhat justifies the expense, as one lure can last several trips. Tough TPE is also why tungsten nail weights work much better than lead nail weights. You might be surprised at how difficult it is to pierce the round body with a sharp tungsten weight; it’s nearly impossible with lead.
Although it’s tough, TPE is also susceptible to heat.
“I had a few melt in my truck,” said Johnson. Storage is an issue, as you don’t want to pack them tightly in a bag, which can permanently bend the spikes. The tackle industry is already offering storage containers that hang the lures on wire in a deep tackle tray.
One last note: most of the bass anglers doing well on the national circuits use heavy-action casting rods, reels spooled with 16- to 25-pound test fluorocarbon. That’s the rig Pete Johnson was using successfully. I opted for a medium-heavy spinning rod, the reel spooled with 30-pound, hi-vis Fireline terminated with a 10-foot leader of 15-pound fluorocarbon. Heavy tackle helps catch ‘em as the fish seem to almost immediately spit these baits back out. You must set the hook quickly and with authority. Light tackle might not get the job done.
At the rate Urchinmania is growing, pretty soon almost every bass in North America will see them, so they might not work as well when fish get conditioned. But for now these urchins are certainly a fun, worthwhile addition to your bass arsenal.
