Hideup Baits Walkthrough - There's No Hiding From the Fuzzy Evolution

Introduction: In fashion and popular trends, what's old is often new again. However, one correlation I'm not sure anyone saw coming was the popular 1960s and 1970s trend of shag rugs being reincarnated as a fishing lure - or really fishing lures. I'm convinced, somewhere in the bait-making universe, a lure designer's cat coughed up a shag rug hairball and a light bulb exploded. So while most will refer to them as urchin or fuzzy baits, I'm going with shag rug hairball. All kidding aside, it appears we are in the midst of the next big trend and the company behind this fuzzy revolution, Hideup Co., Ltd., has more than one profile to line your tackle box.

There's no denying or escaping bass fishing's latest trend

Founded by former tournament angler Hideo Yoshida, Hideup has been in existence since 2004, but Yoshida was designing and crafting lures even before then. The Coike, one of his original baits, is over twenty years (20yrs) old, and as one might expect, while it didn't take long for the bait to gain a strong following among core anglers within Japan, those who knew about it managed to keep it a secret for about ten years. Finally, somewhere around 2015 to 2018, the bait gained more widespread popularity, and now, thanks to a distribution partnership with Spro USA, Hideup's baits are infiltrating North American markets at a viral pace.

It's all about the fuzzies, or as I prefer, shaggy baits

Maybe it's the big bait fisherman in me, but I resisted the early stages of this craze refusing to roll the dice at the end of my line. Zander on the other hand embraced the fuzzy baits shortly after witnessing their potential after ICAST 2025 and has been primarily fishing them combined with BFS. In comparison to the traditional dice baits the larger profile "Urchin" style baits like the Coike somehow make more sense to me.

Zander has been fishing traditional dice baits and all the different Coike urchin style baits since they were introduced

Maybe it's because they begin to resemble a fish ball. Certainly some of the newer variants of the Coike coming out like the Coike Fish and Coike Fish Gill lean into that interpretation. The trick these days though, is getting your hands on one. Of course, in the bass fishing industry, when a bait is scarce (especially a soft plastic), you know what happens next.

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BASS Pro, Kyle Welcher, shares his line strategy when fishing this class of bait

Fortunately for Hideup, their success is not tied to a single bait. Yoshida has taken the shaggy bait concept to an entirely different level. It's rather obvious the baits catch fish, so no real "review" is needed. Just the same, I managed to get my hands on some of these newer profiles for a closer look. I was also fortunate enough, recently, to share the water with fishing pros Bryan New and Kyle Welcher who shared some of their tips and techniques for rigging and fishing these baits. Afterall, that's the real question once you're holding one of these unorthodox baits - how do you rig them?

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BASS Pro, Bryan New, introducing Hideup's Coike Fish

Coike Fish : The Coike Fish is very similar to the original Coike but is made with a thicker shag. The individual limbs or appendages have more shape to them with a passing resemblance to fish fry - hence the name. I had best success fishing this bait on a jighead with an extra long shank, Gamakatsu's G-Finesse Tricky Head to be exact.

Introducing Hideup's Coike Fish, featuring appendages that resemble fish fry

Shown rigged here on a Gamakatsu G-Finesse Tricky Head

My original intent was to fish the Coike Fish on a free rig, so I took the silicone sleeve Hideup packages the bait with to keep it centered on the wire within the original box and worked it through the center of the bait as a sort of line through sleeve. While I have yet to actually rig the bait as intended, I did fish it with a bullet weight above and Owner's Jungle Wacky Weedless Hook below the bait. This actually worked through a few fish before the bait started to slip down onto the hook, covering the hook point. This resulted in several missed hits. In hindsight, a bead between the hook and bait would have prevented this from happening.

My first Coike fish instantly made me a believer

Conventional rigging is to use a treble hook in that config or even nestle a point of the treble into the meat of the bait like you would if wacky rigging a soft plastic. Gamakatsu recently debuted a hook to facilitate a wacky style setup. The hook features a clip along the shank to attach weights and is available with or without a weedguard. Kyle Welcher introduces us to the Ball Rig Hook in the video below.