The Coike Craze: The Bait Everyone’s Talking About

The Coike Craze, a Tapestry of Tentacles, and the Squid Sensation. No, it’s not a lineup of new bands playing at the music festival of the week; instead, it’s Urchin Palooza, the next bass bait craze sweeping the nation.

These new soft-plastic lures, shaped like sea urchins, could easily pass as dog toys. But it’s actually bass anglers that are now chasing them all over the globe, trying to secure a few for their next tournament.

Whenever this phenomenon happens in the bass fishing world, the question becomes: Gimmick? Or going the distance? 

Each year, many new lures enter the fishing market claiming to be the next big thing, only to end up in the clearance bin. So, the skepticism is real. But, if you miss the first boat out on a true revolutionary lure like the Senko or Chatterbait, you can end up at the bottom of the tournament results page – fast.

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m always too skeptical about the newest bass lure of the month. As a result, a few of the lures I have passed on have turned out to be iconic baits that caught bass like magic, especially during the first few years.  

With that said, I’m not missing out on this one. I think this whole urchin bait movement certainly has legs – or at least tentacles. The urchins are going the distance!

History of Japanese Tentacle Baits

Urchin designs are not new. They have been catching bass in Japan for some 20 years. Japanese-based Hideup lures made some of the first tentacle-style baits for bass fishing as far back as 2005. The Hideup Coike entered the U.S. tackle market sometime in the early 2020s.

With that established history, “Coike” is quickly becoming the proprietary eponym for tentacle baits, much like how “Senko” or “Chatterbait” became eponyms for stick worms and vibrating jigs. Once a brand name is coined to include knockoffs and duplicates, that brand sort of owns the category as the OG, which is half the battle in branding. With that, the Coike craze is now fully involved.

In addition, all Coikes, urchins, tentacles, and squids have several other factors in their favor for a tackle takeover. First, I’m not sure the Coike design is patented. So, it’s wide open for duplicators to produce similar lures quickly to meet massive demand. 

As just a few examples of companies producing tentacle baits, here is a short list: Hideup Coike, Hag’s Prickly Pear, Skinny Bear Shak’em Up, Z-Man Fuzzy Nuggetz, Yamamoto Uni, Strike King Tumble Weed, Arsenal Morning Star, and Berkley Maxscent ‘Moeba. 

The Versatility of Urchin Lures

Also, this lure has no boundaries. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of live and archived coverage of this lure at work, and its range is limitless. It works on all bass species. It works in all seasons. It works on all types of fisheries, including reservoirs, natural lakes, rivers, and tidal basins.

The Coike initially followed in the wake of the most recent minnow-shaking trend. However, the minnow is somewhat hamstrung by the stigma of being a forward-facing sonar bait only. And this is where the Coike is really going to push beyond the minnow trend: it’s more universal.

Yes, the Coike’s first exposure appeared as a scoping cousin to the minnow. But over the last two years, it’s become increasingly apparent that those spiny urchins will work just fine when fished anyway and anywhere you want to fish them, with or without scope. 

How the Coike is Winning Tournaments

Bass Pro Tour anglers Banks Shaw and Mitchell Robinson were some of the first to quietly reveal this fact about the long reach of the tentacle baits. Both anglers fished the Tackle Warehouse Pro circuit in 2025 when MLF first implemented the hybrid system of forward-facing sonar restrictions. During that season, anglers could not use forward beams on day two of competition. On several occasions, both Shaw and Robinson employed Coike-type baits to catch plenty of bass on the “no scope days.” Each of them played a scopeless urchin en route to victory in 2025, too, with Shaw winning at Pickwick and Robinson winning at Hartwell. Also, both finished first and second in the points, with Shaw winning the Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit Angler of the Year honors and Robinson finishing runner-up. 

Most recently, the Bassmaster Elite Series at Santee Cooper really pulled back the curtain on the urchin’s potential to be fished scopeless on shallow cover such as docks, cypress trees, and vegetation. Half of the top 10, including the winner Chris Johnston, power-fished urchins on heavy casting tackle. In doing so, this event proved that the Coike, and its replicants, are not just scoping baits, they are indeed universal baits. The bait can be fished anywhere the imagination wants to put it. 

It can be cast, pitched, skipped, and probably even punched in and around every kind of cover. 

• Drop-shot Coike? Absolutely
• Carolina-rigged Coike? Probably
• Topwater Coike? Why not?
• Alabama-rigged Coikes? Hey, let’s not get carried away here.

The Unexplained Phenomenon of New Lures

I’ve already heard plenty of experiences from top pros about how the Coike is going to be, “one of those deals.” 

To translate that pro-lingo out a bit, it’s one of those unexplained deals where bass go bonkers for a new look, action, feel, color, etc. But from an angler’s perspective, that “new look” is “dumb” and does not look like something a bass should eat. So, when the bass does bite the dumb lure – over and over again – it’s quite mind-blowing.

When “one of those deals” comes out, you can literally fish a pressured lake for hours with standard lures without a bite, pick up the new lure, and suddenly it’s like fishing a stocked pond. 

The lineage of this new lure magic is well documented: Neon floating worms, shaky heads, Senkos, Chatterbaits, Alabama rigs – just to name a few. Even though it’s maddening, it’s quite remarkable to see how bass can get so conditioned to avoid one lure while going so full send on a new lure at the same time. 

When this phenomenon happens in the tournament bass fishing world, it creates a much-needed humbling moment. Bass anglers, of all levels, unite to scratch their heads and say, “Well, I’ll be damned! How about that?” 

Just when we think we know it all about lures and there is nothing new, something like the Coike comes along and reminds us that we are never going to completely understand bass. These instances rekindle the mystery of fishing and renew the spirit of anglers. This refreshed hope of catching bass on something new helps drive the marketplace, and that’s a positive the bass fishing industry needs right now. 

Future Trends in Tournament Tackle

Out on the water, pro anglers are spending days on end experimenting with these spiny creations to gain a competitive advantage in tournaments. One thing history has taught us about these powerful new lure trends: the early adopters get the worm. Being in the first small wave of anglers to gain immense confidence in a new bait has translated into millions of dollars in winnings. 

Back on land, bass fishing tackle companies will be monitoring the tournament scene closely, searching for some kind of market lead that might come from the timely tentacles of urchins. As already mentioned, multiple companies already produce some version of the Coike, with more following. But there is still a lot to learn about this bait. It could bring a long trail of specific urchin-technique equipment, starting with hooks and weights for better snag-proofness and sink rates. It would not surprise me to see rods designed for Coikes, especially for heavy cover applications, which might lend a boost to casting rod sales. We’re probably going to see a slew of specialty tackle boxes with chambers designed to hold these baits in a free-standing way, so the tentacles don’t get curled up. Finally, spikey tentacles are going to start popping out of a lot of lures for the next couple of years. 

So, look for the Urchin Stiks, Tentacle Tamers, Koikey Keepers, and even sun hoodies with a tapestry of tentacles camo pattern coming to a tackle retailer near you this fall.