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Spring 2022
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In contrast, I can give you two examples of when you will want to peg your weight.
First, when fishing rocks, I peg my weight. I want to feel what the weight is transmitting. If the weight is on the bottom and the worm is trailing behind, you will lose some of the feel that your sinker is transmitting. By pegging your weight, you keep everything together so it can transmit the maximum feel.
When flipping and pitching you want to make sure that your sinker is pegged. You do not want your sinker separating from your bait when you are fishing heavy weights.
Picture this – you do not have your weight pegged and you drop your flipping bait into cover. Your sinker starts its way to the bottom, but a bass hits your bait as it travels by.
When you start to feel the bite, your sinker is already on the bottom, but your bait is in the bass’ mouth two-feet above your sinker. You feel the bass, you go to set the hook you now have to lift that sinker off the bottom to generate enough power to get a hook into the bass. Chances are slim that you can generate enough power to get a good hook set. Results are a missed bass.
Think back at how many times this happened last season?
It could be a simple fact that if your sinker was pegged, many of these misses would have turned into bass in your boat? I can tell you it would have resulted in more than you think. In flipping and pitching situations, you want your weight pegged to your hook.
SIZE OF YOUR WORM
We all carry allot of plastics in our boats, but if you are like me, you are carrying worms that never see time in the water. We all have favorites that see more than 80 percent of the fishing time.
Weed out what you are not fishing and expand your worm options to fill in some gaps you may have in your system. Carry your main worm choices. For me, this is a 6” to 7” worm. I will also stock 4” worms to use when the bite is off, and I need to downsize.
On the other side of the spectrum, I carry a few different 10” worms to give the bass a different look during the height of the season.
A 10” worm is not carried by many fishermen; they have the impression that it’s too big and will not trigger bites. I can attest this is not true. Some of my biggest bites come from 10” worms every season. In fact, I have won a few tournaments when I was depending on a 10” worm. This is a worm tactic that you should not ignore.
OPEN YOUR PLASTICS BOX
When it comes to Texas-rig fishing do not be shy about just fishing worms, open your plastic box and take advantage of what you have.
I cannot tell you how many fish that I catch on tubes, craws, and creature baits, just to name a few. If you can put it on a hook and rig it Texas, try it. You will really expand your options that you can fish day in and day out to trigger more bites.
HOOKS
Through the years, just as plastics and bait options have changed, hook companies have expanded and evolved products to support these changes. Three hooks that you should have in your mix is a flipping hook, Offset Worm hook and an EWG Hook (Extra Wide Gap).
When it comes to hook preference, I will let you be the judge of what you carry and what you use for each selection. Just make sure that you are putting the best odds in your favor when rigging your plastics on your preferred hook.
Also pay attention to see if new hooks are not introduced to support new tactics as they come to light. Many times, these specialty hooks are developed just for a certain tactic, so hook up ratio is extremely high in these hook categories.
I hope these Texas-rig tactics will help you put more bass in your boat this season. Just taking a deeper look into what you are doing and how you are rigging baits will help you put more bass in the boat in the long run. I hope you have a successful Texas-rig season this year. •