Yes, it stays on the hook. It gets soft over time and kinda dissolves. So depending on how it's fished, it may come off, or just get smaller and smaller. I've caught many crappie using only one of the gewbers. Well over a dozen, but they were smaller crappie and happen to be biting the gewbers like crazy. I was on a pier with other fishermen, I coulda sold a ton of it there cause no one else was catching anything.
My wife and I ride our bikes to this particular lake. I fish it while she continues to ride around it a bunch of times. When she's done riding, she stops and we go home. The Crappie were not MS sized Crappie, but OK for up North here. I'm serious, I could not buy a bite here without Gewbers!