[briansnat]

It's hard to beat Senkos for bass. I prefer using an EWG 4/0 or 5/0 worm hook, T-style (Youtube will show you how to rig them). Wacky, hooked through the side works well too, but I find it picks up too many weeds. Senkos work best for me fished slowly. Cast, let it drop and sit dead stick on the bottom for maybe 15-20 seconds, lift your rod tip and let it drop and repeat until its back to you. The vast majority of the time the bass will hit it on the initial drop. Watch your line. If the line starts to twitch or move, set the hook. Other times the bass will smash it and there is no doubt its time to set the hook.

9 or 10 inch plastic worms work, but you may be missing out on smaller bass. If you want to focus on bigger fish then generally (but not always) go bigger.

Rapalas are excellent for bass, but you generally want to use the larger ones, in the 3 to 5 inch range. Referring to the original floating Rapala, start working them slowly. Cast, let sit for 20 seconds or so, twitch and let sit and keep doing that back to the boat. If that doesn't work try anything. Jerky retrieves, fast retrieves, slow and steady retrieves. Sometimes one of those will produce better than the other methods.

Beyond the Senko, and the knockoff Yumdinger (which are more of a stickbait) and other plastic worms (Zoom Trick worm, Ragetail Thumper, Zoom Speed Worm are some of my favorites) some other things you want in your NJ bass tackle box are:

Spinnerbaits and buzzbaits

Other soft plastics such as brushhogs, Yamamoto Kreatures, Zoom Super Flukes, Rage Tail Space Monkey, Swim Senkos and other soft swimbaits.

Crankbaits including diving Rapalas (like the Shad-rap), Bombers and Rat-L-Traps

Top water. My favorites are Rapala Skitterpop, Smithwick Devils Horse, Heddon Torpedo, Zara Spook, Jitterbug, Rebel Frog-r and nearly any wide nosed popper (Rebel makes a good one).

Jigs such as Strike King and Pepper. There are a number of varieties of jig heads but you can't go wrong with the "football" head.

Bass sized "in-line" spinners such as Mepps, CP Swing and Blue Fox Vibrax.

I use soft plastics about 80 percent of the time for bass. Most often I fish my plastics unweighted with a T-rig, EWG hook until the heat of summer kicks in. Then when I want to go deeper, the three rigs I find myself using most often are Carolina Rig, weighted Texas Rig and dropshot. Youtube will show you how to rig and fish these three.

For plastic colors I seem to do best with dark colors. Black is probably the best all around and green pumpkin, junebug and watermelon also work well for me. I've never done well with the whites, chartreuse and other light colors, but your mileage may vary.

For crankbaits I tend toward silver/black or perch patterns. For topwater, black,sliver/black or frog patterns.

Youtube is a very good place to go for tutorials about bass fishing. You'll learn more in an hour of going through videos there then what a handful of us will tell you, but there is no substitute for getting out on the water and trying things out.