Nikko Waxworm

The Nikko Waxworm is an artificial waxworm. I had gotten a package years ago on one of my visits to Japan and although I caught fish with them I never did import them. I don't remember why I didn't, but some oversights are easy to fix.

I've done well fishing with waxworms for both trout and panfish. Real waxworms don't stay on the hook well, though. A waxworm is basically a tiny little oblong bag full of goo. Puncture the skin with a hook and before too long all the goo is gone.

The Nikko Waxworm solves that problem. It stays on the hook well. The plastic is really quite durable and will last for lots of fish.

For a while I carried Mummy Worms in the shop. Mummy Worms are preserved waxworms. I don't know just how they preserve them, but the goo is transformed into a waxy substance. They stayed on the hook better than live waxworms, but not nearly as well as the Nikko Waxworm.

Mummy Worms also need to be used fairly quickly or refrigerated. If I had a man-cave with a beer refrigerator it wouldn't have been a problem, but keeping the shop inventory in our small apartment's small apartment-sized refrigerator eventually caused a little tension.

The Nikko Waxworm solves that problem, too. Life's too short for domestic tension, especially when it is so easily avoided.

They really are a very good solution. You don't need to feed 'em, you don't need to refrigerate 'em, they're there when you need 'em and the fish seem to love 'em. They are non-toxic, swallow-safe, and biodisintegratable. They are scented, so check your state's regulations on the use of scented plastic baits.

Because the Nikko Waxworm is fairly thick, you will need to use a wide gap hook. I have had good luck with the Gamakatsu Amago hook, which has a pretty extreme shape.

The hook does not have an eye, so you will have to snell it, but with a little practice, snelling a hook isn't much harder than threading your tippet through a hook eye.

So far, I have used the Nikko Waxworms only when trout fishing, but some of the trout streams around here also have good populations of fallfish. Fallfish seem to like the Nikko Waxworms just as much as trout do.

They will float, so I fish them with a light split shot, which works nicely with keiryu rods and with the TenkaraBum 33, 36 and 40.

Nikko Waxworm

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