Within the vast assortment of soft-bodied offerings available to anglers, those that duplicate the shape of a worm are time-tested producers. Add a ring-style body and the bait becomes even more effective, particularly in cold water.

Ring-style plastic worms feature body rings that encircle the main body of the bait. Good examples include the Yum Ribworm and the Northland Tackle Slurpies Ringworm. The Yum version comes in both a six-inch and four-inch version. Northland's is available only in a four-inch length.

Starting last fall, I began to give ringworms an honest workout. A conversation I had with Scott Fairbairn, one of competitive angling's top-ranked professional walleye anglers, motivated me to do so. Our conversation was centered on the use of artificial offerings in flowing waters during the winter.

"I would say for the past five years during the winter I haven't dunked a minnow at all," said Fairbairn.

Since he's from Hager City, Wis., Fairbairn gets plenty of opportunities to fish the nearby Mississippi River, one of the country's top rivers for smallmouth bass and walleyes.

"There may be days when I would catch a few more fish (on livebait), but there are plenty of plastics out there that work very well," he said.

"Sometimes fish even seem to prefer them. Ringworms in particular are a good bait. They have a little tiny tail, so they don't have the thump and vibration of more traditional twister tails. Even less action is needed at times. We'll pinch that little tail off of the ringworm, making it a do-nothing bait.

"A nonaggressive bait that just sits there is what you want." Fairbairn added. "You might think that if you are going with plastic alone you want a lot of action. But not during the winter. The action is what you do to the jig, and, most of the time, that isn't much."

Though ringworms are new addition to my tackle, ring-style baits are not. More than 20 years ago, one of the top soft-plastics my buddies and I used was the Galida's Grubz, a three-inch twister tail grub with a ribbed body. Our most productive pattern was smoke, a neutral color.

At the time I attributed much of the bait's effectiveness to its color pattern, which has become increasingly difficult to find in recent years.

As I now look back, it's likely the ribbed body had a lot to do with how well the grub worked. A ribbed body moves water as it is slowly worked, creating vibrations that gamefish can pick up via their lateral line. Perhaps this is why a ringworm works so well in cold water. You can work it slowly, in the nonaggressive manner Fairbairn spoke of, but fish can still detect it.

During the past two months, I've taken many smallmouth bass and walleyes on ringworms. They can be fished in many situations faced by those hardy soles who never see an end to the fishing season.

Boat anglers on larger rivers will find it effective to pitch ringworms up on shallow flats and bars. Feeding walleyes and smallmouth bass will hold in surprisingly shallow water when they are looking for food. The best shallow areas tend to be located above or below deeper pools.