Flipping, Pitching and Punching Rigs For Bass You’ve Probably Never Used
While most people fishing for largemouth bass and the like are already likely well acquainted with the old standard that is the Texas rig, that is not the be all, end all for getting through the thick stuff. Many creative alternative rigging setups for various soft plastics exist, so why limit yourself? Many of them make even more sense to use over the common Texas rig.
One of the disadvantages of a Texas rig for punching heavy cover is it puts your line through before the bait, and before the weight. This can lead to excessive snags and getting hung up on surface vegetation before the bait gets to its desired target, the fish!
Another is shakeout, or what happens when that big ol’ sow bass shakes her head once she realized she’s been fooled. With heavy lead and tungsten at the far end of a 5/O or 6/O hook, that weight gets whipping around something fierce and can actually cause the hook to get tossed or even rip the fish’s lip. Long story short, she ain’t getting posted up your Instagram feed if she didn’t make it out of the cabbage!
So what are some other rigs we can use?
1 – Punch Through Rig
Our top contender for the texas rig is the “Punch Through Rig”. This setup places the lead or tungsten at the bottom of the hook, which makes sense and it will be more streamlined as it hits the surface vegetation and penetrates without trying to put the line through first. An additional advantage is it places the weight much close to the bass’s face at the time of hookup, drastically reducing shakeout that is often seen when using heavier weights on flipping/pitching rigs.
This is a simple rig to tie up – grab any EWG hook that is sized appropriately for whatever creature/beaver type soft plastic you’re using. Instead of putting a bullet style weight on before tying up, just tie straight on. Before putting the bait on the hook, thread a 1/2oz bell sinker on to the hook. Rig your bait backwards to how you would for a traditional Texas rig and voila! You’ve got yourself a tidy, snag-free large mouth bass smasher.
2 – Punching Tube
Next up is the weedless tube punching rig. Anyone who has used a tube jig knows how devastatingly effective they are for smallmouth bass and largemouth bass alike. Only downfall of fishing them around any over is how snaggy they are due to the exposed hook – Enter the weedless tube rig! Using the same EWG style hook and bell sinker from the Punch Through Rig.
Match a EWG hook to your preferred tube and hook straight through the nose of the tube, after this, thread on a 1/2oz bell sinker to the hook and slide it inside of the tube. To finish up, texspose the barb of the hook through the side of the tube and now you’ve got yourself a Texas rigged, weighted tube with all the hog slayin’ goodness and none of the snags!
Both of these rigs are equally effective and should be a regular addition to your flipping, pitching and punching repertoire. Simple and effective, seasoned slaunches won’t know what hit ‘em!
