Here are several Texas rig fishing tips to help you catch more bass. The Texas rig is a rock solid set-up, and understanding the little nuisances of this set up can greatly increase your odds of getting bites and landing more fish. The Texas rig can be fished all year round, and flat out catches fish. Hopefully, after reading this post you will gain some key insights on when, how, and where to use a Texas rig to keep you “Kraken” bass!
The Texas rig is hands down one of the most popular terms in bass fishing. If you don’t know what it is, or the proper way to get it set up, you would be up the creek without a paddle. Anyone starting bass fishing typically starts off learning about texas rigging their soft plastic baits. The reason it is so essential is because Texas rigging enables your soft plastic to go through cover without hanging up. Bass are almost always found near or around cover. When they are in the nasty stuff your odds of catching them goes down dramatically if you can’t get your baits to them. Once I understood how to Texas rig a bait properly, my bass fishing world exploded with stoke juice. (“exploded with stoke juice” translation: caught ridiculously more fish)
The Texas rig can be employed in all kinds of different situations. Little modifications can be made with a Texas rig to help you with the fishing conditions you are faced with. The rest of the post should help give you some ideas of these possible modifications. To give you a clear picture of what a Texas rig is about, when ever you hear of read the words, “Texas rigged the bait on the hook” this is an illustration of what they are talking about.
The common mistake people make is not getting the bait laying straight on the hook once it is rigged. It takes a bit of practice. The key is to identify where your hook point should go in to the bait, so it will lay flush with the hook. Once you get this dialed you will be Texas rigging perfectly in no time. If your Texas rigged bait looks like any of these examples below you are doing it wrong!
Now you know what a Texas rig is, let’s dive into some of my favorite ways of using this rig to get you catching more bass.
Fishing a Texas rig weightless is the ideal rig for fishing shallow cover. Employing a weightless Texas rig is perfect for when the bass are found in skinny water during the spring around the spawn, or sometimes in the fall when bass will move to the backs of creeks to feed up before the winter. Also, another determining factor of deciding when to through a weightless Texas rig is if the bass are highly pressured and finicky. Rigging your bait without any weight will slow down the fall of your bait, and give you a more finesse presentation to get a tight lipped bass to bite. The slower fall with a weightless bait is subtly imitating dying forage bass often see in their natural environment.
Typically, the best baits created for Texas rigging weightless are soft plastic stick style baits, worms, and flukes. Use any of these on a offset worm hook
and you are in business. Match the hook size to the size of your baits. A stick style bait would include baits such as a Yamaoto senko
, Havoc back slide
, or even something like a Keitech Sexy Impact
. All three of these are awesome weightless stick baits. Some great worms that work well Texas rigged weightless are the classic zoom trick worms
, and roboworms
. You can’t go wrong with either of these straight tail style worms on a weightless Texas rig. Flukes or soft plastic jerk baits such as the Strike King caffeine shad
, or Zoom super fluke
work especially well on this un-weighted set up. If you haven’t used a weightless fluke, you are missing out on some sweet bass.
Finesse Texas rig fishing is dynamite for catching bass. To get set up for it all you do is add extremely light bullet weights in front of your texas rigged soft plastics. The best all around size is an 1/8 oz tungsten bullet head sinker
. Slide it up your line then tie on a 3/0 offset worm hook. Set this up on a light spinning rod with 6 or 8 lbs fluorocarbon line
, and you are living the dream of finesse Texas rigging. Hundreds of bass fall victim to this set-up.
Great baits to use on this finesse set up are soft plastic craw imitations. Try using craws like a Berkley chigger craw
or a Reactions Innovations smallie beaver
. There are a million soft plastic craws on the market, but anything in the 3 inch range is typically a bass crusher on a finesse texas rig set up. Depending on the size of the craw I’ll sometimes use a smaller 2/0 offset worm hook
to get it to lay on the hook properly. Don’t stress about pegging your weight just let it slide on the line. Cast it out, and slowly crawl your finesse texas rig along the bottom. Here’s a little diagram of one of my favorite set-ups for finesse Texas rig fishing.
Most Texas rigs you read about online or in magazines typically talk about Texas rigging for flipping and pitching baits into heavy nasty cover. Sometimes the cover is so thick they refer to it as “punching.” Texas rigging this way enables you to get to those bass that nobody else wants to go in and try and get. Typically when you texas rig this way you want to use a straight shank hook
, with a solid heavier tungsten weight. The extra weight helps you pitch your bait more accurately, and it helps pull your line down as the bait falls into the cover. A 3/8 oz weight
is often the most common size, but the nastier the cover the heavier you want to go to get the bait to fall down through. Straight shank hooks work best on a Texas rig for flipping or pitching because your hook up ratio improves dramatically. When you work so hard to get your bait into these areas you don’t want to be missing any bites. The straight shank hook will make a big difference.
Some solid baits that work good for flipping and pitching are creature baits, lizzards, craw imitations, and big worms. Creature baits are those like a zoom brush hawg
, or a Missile Baits Stroyer
with tons of appendage’s and bulk that help draw strikes. Flipping lizards like a Yamamoto Lizard
or a Strike King Rage Tail Lizard 
are often more popular around the spawn when bass are bedding, but don’t be afraid to try them other times. Lizards definitely fit the bill for the mantra, “big baits equals big bass.” Once again flipping craw’s such as a Havoc Pit Boss
, or a Megabass Bottle Shrimp
are solid fish catchers on this set up. Plus, big worms such as the Culprit Worm
or the Zoom Ol’ Monster 
are great baits for flipping and pitching into heavy cover.
Here are a couple more tips about Texas rigging. Don’t be afraid to bomb these baits out into deep water. Texas rigged baits are great for dragging through deep cover and catching bass. Plus, a little trick that can help in dirty stained water is to adding a Glass Bead
between your weight and your bait. It creates a little clicking noise that can help draw attention to your baits when the water is super dirty. One more thing to try is adding a Punching Skirt
between your bait and the weight. This can help keep your bait free from gunk and grass as you move it through the water on a Texas rig. Little variations like these on your Texas rigged baits can often make a big difference in getting bites that others aren’t getting.
Texas rigging is vital to bass fishing success. If you have a friend or family memeber who wants to start bass fishing, please share this post with them so they can get started out in the right direction. Thank you for your support! Hopefully this will help you when you get out to start “Kraken” bass!
As Always,
Stay Stoked!
The links above and below in this post are affiliate links were you can pick up baits, rod’s, reels, line, and anything else to “Krak” bass when Texas rig fishing. Krakenbass receives a small percentage of the sales through these links. These links are to baits and gear I personally trust and know work. I put these links to make them helpful for you, and not for the small amount I make for the sale of the products. I hope these products can help you “krak” some bass! Thank you for your support.
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