To peg or not to peg. That is the question. Or at least one of many questions when diving down the rabbit hole of advanced Texas rig tips and tricks. There will be times when you'll want your tungsten weight to slide freely up and down the line, and others when you'll need to peg it so your weight and soft plastic fall together. Alex Rudd, the bearded bad man himself, breaks down a few key advanced Texas rigging techniques and the terminal tackle you'll need to get the job done.

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Video transcript:

Alex Rudd:
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the MONSTERBASS channel. For you guys that don't know me, my name is Alex Rudd and I own and operate the Alex Rudd fishing channel. But today I am here with you guys on the MONSTERBASS channel, and we're going to be diving into some advanced Texas rig rigging, and we're going to really break down everything that you could ever want to know about the Texas rig kind of the next step, right? You probably saw Travis's video that he did. It was the basics of the Texas rig. Well, I'm just going to start where he stopped and we're going to go into the advanced aspects of the Texas rig and break down every little thing that you could imagine.

Alex Rudd:
All right, so you guys can see here, I've got quite a terminal box here and most of it is dedicated to Texas rig stuff because a Texas rig is such a prominent rig that we all fish as Bass fishermen, and it's because of it's versatility. You can fish everything from a creature bait to a worm, to a swim bait, to just all kinds of different things. And so you got to have a bunch of different hooks, a bunch of different weights for all kinds of different applications. So first thing I want to do is break down different hooks and what each hook is made for. So we'll start with just your standard worm hook. Now your standard worm hook isn't going to have that wide gap like a wide gap does. And this is really designed for thinner baits, things like worms.

Alex Rudd:
I mean, that's what the name of the hook implies that it is used for. And that's exactly what it's used for. Is those thinner more slender baits. Baits where you don't need as much travel in the gap of the hook to be able to get a hook into the fish's mouth. The next one is going to be your EWG. Now your EWG gets its name, because it is an extra wide gap hook. Meaning the belly of that hook or the gap of that hook is much wider. Having a lot more travel in that hook, which it is made to accommodate thicker baits. Stuff like your creature baits and your crawl baits, anything that is thicker and shorter and stubbier than your longer worms and slender worms and stuff like that. A lot of your EWG hooks as well have an offset. And so what that means is that the hook point is actually offset to the eye, which helps to promote hookup ratio.

Alex Rudd:
The next one is going to be your straight shank hook. Now your straight shank hook is for more of your flipping applications. You know, whether it be punching or just flipping a creature bait around. This is what your straight shank hook is designed for. And when you look at your straight shank hook, it gets its name because it has a straight shank. So your straight shank hook is designed more for your heavy applications, you're punching, you're flipping. These hooks for the most part are going to be two X, three X and four X strong hooks, really heavy gauge wire minimal to no flex in this thing. And so it's designed to flip on heavy line 20 pound plus floor carbon or 50 to 60 pound braid. Okay, so now let's get into our weight. There's going to be three distinct types of weights that you guys are going to see for the most part.

Alex Rudd:
The first one is just going to be your standard flipping weight. So your flipping weight is going to have a lot wider sides. It's going to have a lot more curvature to it. This weight is designed to be flipped into something. It helps it to get into the cover and get out of the cover without getting hanged up. The next one is going to be your worm weight. Now your worm weight is going to be a lot more slender down the sides. Is going to have a lot more dramatic of a point down and almost like a bullet. And this is where we get the name, the bullet weight. This is what your standard worm weight is going to look like. And it's going to be a lot flatter so that bait can set flat up onto the weight. Another thing that this is really good for, is when you're dragging something, whether it be through rocks or through grass or whatever it is, it helps it to just slither through there because of the finer or more narrow point on the front of that weight.

Alex Rudd:
And then the last one is going to be your punching weight. Now this is just like a standard flipping weight like I just showed you. But some of these actually come with a little grommet on the end that you can run a skirt up onto and put a punching skirt on. But what really sets apart a flipping weight and a punching weight is simply the size. These things are three quarter of an ounce, an ounce, ounce and a half even bigger. The one I have in my hand here is an ounce and a half, and it's designed to be paired up with that big straight shank flipping hook and punched into grass to catch fish that are living under mattered vegetation.

Alex Rudd:
Okay. So there's two ways to run your Texas rig. You can either run it pegged or unpegged, and there's a lot of going back and forth between angles of why you do it and why not to do it. But for me, it's really, really simple. I'm going to peg a Texas rig when I'm flipping it. It keeps it a compact package, keeps the whole package together and it helps that bait and that weight and that hook to get into what I want to get into and get out of there without getting hung up. Because if you've got an unpegged Texas rig and you flip it over a limb, there's a chance for that weight to slide away from that bait for that bait to go under that limb and then you're hung up and you've got yourself a mess. Now on the flip side of that, it's sometimes good for that weight to get away from that bait.

Alex Rudd:
And it's what I call weight bait separation. And especially when you're fishing in cold water, especially when you're fishing around pressured fish, even with bedding fish, I've seen a lot of people they like to flip for bedding fish with a peg, Texas rig, I don't. And the reason for that is I can flip that Texas rig in there and that weight can actually separate away from that bait. And what it does is it makes that bait virtually weightless. And so it makes it a lot easier for that fish to suck that bait in. And I've seen so many times, going into the spring late winter, you're going to start seeing these fish move up on the bank and they're going to start getting ready to spawn. And they're going to start getting in that funk and you can get so many baits and miss them with a peg Texas rig, where if you just simply unpeg that Texas rig and let that weight separate from that bait, you're going to allow those fish to get that bait into their mouth and you're going to get a lot better hooks set on.

Alex Rudd:
So I know a lot of you guys have seen a peg Texas rig, but I'm going to show you a little something different. What I do is I actually double peg it. So I peg it on the front and on the back. And what that does, it allows me to grab that peg on the back and grab my weight and run it up my line and make essentially a light kind of mini Carolina rig. And so you can slide that right back down there. You can have your standard Texas rig, but if you get in a situation where you feel like the fish are being finicky, where you're fishing for bed fish, where you're fishing on a flat, where you've gone from flipping to fishing on a grass flat, you can run that weight right up that line. Turn that thing into a mini Carolina rig and give yourself just a little something different.

Alex Rudd:
And it takes the Texas rig and it turns it into something that's even more versatile than it already was. So I always say this because I am a teacher, always be learning. The Texas rig is ever changing. The baits are ever changing. The rig itself is ever changing. There's always variations on what you can do with it, what weights you can use. I mean, every single year, there's something new that comes out that can be Texas rigged on a Texas rig. And that's what makes it so versatile. So don't stop learning, Texas rig weird things, take a swim bait in Texas rig. Try new creature baits. Try new worms. Get in your MONSTERBASS box, pull out something that you wouldn't normally Texas rig and go Texas rigging. Play with pegs. Play with weight sizes. There's so much that you can do with the Texas rig to turn it into an even more versatile tool than it already is.