It's a perfect approach to shallow, grassy points, emerging lily and dollar pad fields, fishing over heavy vegetation, and working shallow flats and gravel bars. If you're in heavily wooded water, it's fantastic for that, too. It's also an excellent way to fish the backs of shallow bays and coves, and along the faces of rock dams.

Because -- obviously -- sink rates are slow, weightless plastics are good to fish in about 10 to 12 feet of water, and even better from 1 to 7 feet. You can work them as a topwater, lifting and dropping the bait near the surface, slowly keep it suspended as a mid-depth bait, or let it fall all the way to the bottom and just kind of snake it along. Best of all, you can do all three approaches on the same cast.

The choice of the actual bait is up to you. Fishing weightless can be done with an incredible variety of baits, ranging from Senkos to Yamamoto Super Grubs, to creature baits, tube and magnum tube baits, single and double-tail grubs, ripple-tail worms, ribbed worms -- the choices are endless. Just about anything plastic can be fished without weight.

I tend to use tubes and grubs for smallmouth bass, and larger worms (ribbed and ripple-tailed), creature baits like lizards and crawdads, and "straight" baits like Senkos, on largemouth waters. Weightless lizards top the list for spawning fish.

Weightless plastics are terrific for reservoirs, lakes and ponds, and they've also earned their place on more than a few rivers. Smallmouth bass, for example, love a good double-tail grub, and floating one of these weightless along undercut banks in the summer can provoke ferocious strikes. Weightless grubs are perfect for plopping into shallow backwater eddies and adjoining sloughs.

And, if you like, skip weightless plastics under docks, overhanging willows and trees.

AND HOW
Spinning gear is a good choice for this kind of fishing, allowing you to throw a much lighter bait than you could throw with conventional gear. I favor a 7-foot light-action rod for this type of fishing. If you're using heavier plastics, like a 7- or 9-inch Senko, you can go with heavier line and baitcasting gear, but if you're using a finesse approach like a small double-tail grub, 6- to 8-pound-test and spinning gear is the ticket.

A hook's weight will influence casting distance and action on the lure. I've come to favor worm hooks with an extra-wide gap. They add a little more weight and help with hooksets (keeping in mind that you're working with slack line a lot of the time). You can finesse your hook, too, by using smaller, fine-wire hooks, which free up the bait to act even more naturally.

You can rig up using the same method you'd use for fishing with weights, a la Texas-rig weedless style. A favorite method is to nose-hook the bait, and then "skin hook" the point just up under the outer skin of the worm. Or you can use the wacky worm style, sticking or rubber banding the hook at a right angle in the middle of the plastic.

It's easy to over-fish weightless plastics if you're accustomed to fast and furious retrieves, such as those used at times for spinnerbaits and crankbaits. This is slow, easy fishing, using occasional jerks, twitches, lifts and drops to impart action.

If you choose to fish wacky-worm style, the less action you impart, the better. Use a slight twitch followed by a completely slack line drop, and you'll have all the action you need. In fact, a lot of the success to weightless fishing has to do with not over-controlling your bait. That suggests fishing with slack line in the water, whether it's drifting in current or letting that bait flutter and fall on slack line. It helps to keep your rod tip low to the water.

Weightless plastics are best employed under specific conditions. They are not typically successful when used to fish deep water, as a run-and-gun seeker lure, or in a strong wind. Calm and shallow are keys to success with this method.

A take on a weightless plastic is a thing of beauty. Often, it's a grab and a run in which the fish tightens any slack in your line and all you have to do is swing! At other times, however, you have to pay attention to your line to detect the take. Use a hard hookset, and hang on.