Berkley Gulp! Floating Pinched Crawler 2" - Nightcrawler

A two-inch piece of crawler that floats, which solves the same problem a marshmallow does except here the bait itself is doing the work. Put one on a single hook above an egg sinker and it lifts off the bottom on its own — out of the silt and the weed, up where a cruising trout is actually looking. The body is segmented and pinched through the middle the way a real crawler looks when it's been broken in half, and both ends move independently in any current. That's the part that gets eaten.

Nightcrawler is the natural end of the range: the color for clear water and for fish that have already seen a jar of pink this week. Gulp is water-based rather than plastic, so the scent isn't a coating that washes off in ten minutes — it's the material, and it works the whole time it's down there. But the practical case is simpler than any of that. It lives in your truck all season, it doesn't need a fridge, and it's still good on the last trip of the year.