Tyler Brinks's spring 2026 bass tackle round-up reads less like a trends list and more like a Japanese-import advisory. The dice-style fuzzy bait is now everywhere; the next 12 months belong to hinged minnows, foot-long Neko worms, gill-shaped flat sides and a steady drip of Norries hard baits coming through Spro's American distribution.
Brinks — who writes for several outdoor titles and covers ICAST and the Bassmaster Classic for trends — is candid that the dice-style soft plastic has hit saturation point. "The fuzzy baits are everywhere," he said in his trends video. "That was the case a couple of years ago with the OSP DoLive Stick rubber and then you started seeing the Quake and all these different brands coming in, and now it's just mainstream. Everyone has their own dice. Strike King, Z-Man, you name it."
His pick out of the segment is Z-Man's Fuzzy Nuggets, which lean on the company's elastic ElaZtech material to outlast the field. "These are a dice-style bait. They got the fuzzy TRD. There's three different versions of them," he said. "The thing about these that I like is they are elastic. So obviously that's going to be more durable. It's going to last when you catch a lot of fish. You also have that stretchy material, but they're also very buoyant."
The buoyancy is the fork in the road for drop-shotters: it floats the bait clear of bottom, but a heavier weight is needed to compensate.
Hinged minnows are next on Brinks's list. American imitations of the Pris D-So Shad — including the Yamamoto Hinge Minnow and the Six Sense Shindo — are arriving in bulk. "We're going to see a lot more minnows imitating those Japanese-style minnows that are really popular," he said. "We're going to see more imitations of Japanese baits from American companies. It's just something that happens. Dyson minnows, those are the easy ones."
Big worms are the third headline. Brinks held up the 16-inch G-Crack G-Crazy and the 13-inch Deps Kingo Air Worm and singled out the Neko rig — not the traditional Texas rig — as the reason these baits are exploding.
"The big worm is not new. Think of the old Berkley Power Worms," he said. "But the thing that's different about these is most of the time people are fishing these on a Neko rig, which is crazy. It's a big giant bait and it's going to attract big fish. It's going to have a lot of action because it's such a big long worm."
Hard baits are following a similar trajectory thanks to Spro's deal to distribute Norries in the United States. Brinks called out the Norries Tatamaki 1232 jerkbait, the Shot Over crankbait with internal tungsten ballast, and the lipless TG Rattlin' Jeder as the headline pieces of a wider Japanese hard-bait wave.
"There's more and more Japanese hard baits coming, especially with Norries because they're part of Spro," Brinks said. "Spro is distributing them. So they're releasing them a lot more frequently or they're bringing them to us from Japan."
The fourth category — flat-sided gill baits — is being repositioned. Brinks said the Deps Bull Flat, Megabass Bellows Gill and Berkley Flux Gill have moved beyond Texas and free rigs.
"You could put it on the back of a swim jig or a chatterbait. People are really having success with that," he said. "It's not just a Texas-rig or free-rig bait, but that gill-style bait is something that I think we're going to see more and more of."
Forward-facing sonar continues to bend the finesse market in subtle directions. NetBait's three-inch Sonics Glide gets the round-up's nod for the slow-kick, low-action profile that catches the eye of fish being watched cast by cast.
"It just has a little bit different action," Brinks said. "But that more subtle action is something we're seeing in a lot of baits, or at least I am."
The video closed with tackle storage rather than baits. Brinks flagged Evolution Outdoors' Twitch Box and Blade Runner trays as evidence the storage segment is finally innovating beyond stock plastic boxes. "I think we're going to see more and more smart tackle solutions like this," he said.
ICAST 2026 in Orlando will be the next test of Brinks's bets. For now, he is leaning on hinged minnows, elastic fuzzy dice, foot-long Neko worms and the slow trickle of Norries hard baits to dominate the bass wall through the back half of the year.