>>1029886Plastic worms can be a whole universe unto themselves, so it's not surprising that you're kind of lost.
But first things first: the rats nest you got in our reel was probably not due to the worm. Something you had been fishing earlier had put a lot of twist into the line, and it knotted in the reel. There just wasn't enough weight to the plastic worm to straighten it all back out.
But speaking of fishing techniques, there are a million of them. One of the old guys who taught me how to fish swore by a standard, cheap Walmart lure point-exposed rigging with the hook a little further down the body than normal, so it created a little humpback. He would cast it out and fish it SLOW. I fished his rig, and it produced.
But there's all sorts of ways to rig them to do what you want, pic related and so much more. One of my favorite ways is to put a jighead on a paddletail worm. I've caught more bass on that than I can count.