Weighty Question: To Peg Or Not To Peg

By Jonathan LePera
Special to BassFan

As a young angler, I was conflicted.

Larry Nixon, one of the most accomplished pro anglers of all time, preached the merits of not pegging his bullet sinker when fishing plastic worms. Flipping guru Denny Brauer took the opposite tack, advising anglers to buy an extra box of toothpicks in order to secure the sinker tight to the bait.

Various pros still hold firm to their convictions, but as it turns out, there’s no right or wrong answer to the question: To peg or not to peg?

Hackney’s a Pegger

Greg Hackney, the 2014 Bassmaster Angler of the Year, grew up equally conflicted. As a teenager, he studied the gospel of Brauer, wanting to emulate his shallow-cover approach, which included pegging his bullet sinker when doing so.

“I want to always stay in contact with my bait, knowing where it is at all times,” Hackney says. “When my line goes slack, I know my bait is on bottom or that a fish has it. If you don’t peg your weight, there’s a chance that when that bait is falling, the weight will go away from it. When I pitch out there, I don’t want my bait to hang in cover and away from it or my bait be around the corner of a piece of cover from the sinker.”

Hackney has heard the detractors say an unpegged presentation will fall slower. To that, he suggests they use a lighter weight. For Hackney, fixing his sinker in place isn’t good enough – it’s got to be pegged.

“I would rather use a tree limb than a bobber stop,” Hackney quipped.

After an experience fishing with his nephew a few years back, Hackney ran out of pegs and opted to use a bobber stop that was given to him. Paired with 20-pound Gamma Edge fluorocarbon that he never breaks, Hackney broke off fish on the next three hook sets.

“I pulled up on a willow limb and cut me a small peg and I flipped the rest of the day with it and never broke off,” he said. “The next two days, I fished with my dad where we got 50 bites and I was waiting to see how long it takes me to break off. I don’t remember that I ever broke the line. I said I would never use another bobber stop after that.”

He believes that the weight was cutting the line or turning on the bobber stop – that doesn’t happen when he pegs.

Also, Hackney prefers the peg instead of a bobber stop as he finds a pegged sinker keeps it from pushing down on his plastics and beating them up.

“With that rubber peg, I’m just barely touching the bait or I might leave the slightest gap between the weight and the bait so it doesn’t damage my plastics,” Hackney noted. “With the bobber stop, your weight will have a tendency to (push down) on the bait, it’ll be crooked. Especially with the bigger weight, I don’t want that weight pushing on that bait. I want my weight and bait straight on the hook until the fish has it.”

He’s used a variety of different pegs but prefers the Peg-Its from Top Brass Tackle as they come in different sizes to match the different holes in his tungsten weights.

It’s a Predator/Prey Thing

Shaw Grigsby, a seasoned veteran on the Elite Series, learned sometimes the most important lessons are the hardest to swallow, as was the case at the 2014 the Delaware River Elite Series.

While he finished 5th, a 4-02 stringer on day 1 had him mired in 60th place, a result he blames on having pegged his bullet sinker on his pitching/flipping set-up.

“I had it pegged for some stupid situation like some hydrilla deal in Florida and I turned around and left it pegged and to me that was a major mistake,” Grigsby said. “Will I peg it again? No. Is there a situation where I will peg? No. It’s the last resort for me for catching fish on any soft plastic is to peg that weight.

“I didn’t peg it the next day, and I caught every one of them from that point on, but one, which was negligible compared to the fish I missed on day 1. I don’t really like it in any situation except for heavy brush when you just can’t get a bait through.”

Grigsby believes that the allure of an unpegged bait is a simple matter of the predator/prey relationship.

“It’s some critter chasing a little weight,” he said. “When you have that it’s competition, it’s an instinctive thing that turns fish on.”

Grigsby likes that fact that when a bass picks up his bait, only the bait is in its mouth, providing for better hook penetration.

One application where Grigsby especially prefers an unpegged sinker is when he’s fishing cheese mats.

“That weight will go through real quick,” he said. “Now you have the weight below the mat so you pop your line and it pulls your bait into it, it’s like a fulcrum point. They fall simultaneously but at a distance and the fish doesn’t have anything but the bait in its mouth.

“Once it hits the bottom, I’ll lift it up just to check to make sure that nothing is there and just pop it and then drop it back down. If something comes through that mat, they’re coming to it.”

Grigsby aims to land 100 percent of the fish that bite, and if he’s pegging, he believes that he’s putting the odds in the favor of the fish.

“After 31 years of professional angling, I’ve realized not pegging is what I need,” Grigsby said. “I carry those rubber pegs and toothpicks, but as you go along, I just need to leave it alone and let my unpegged bait do its job and catch the higher percentage. I’ve learned over the years of flipping and pitching that even when it’s not pegged, it acts like it’s pegged. You learn that you keep your line taught with your sinker up against the bait and then when it’s in the bush, drop it so it falls as one.”

Pegging Works, Just Not Everywhere

Fellow Floridian and Bassmaster Elite Series pro Terry Scroggins isn’t against pegging his sinker – he just avoids it at every opportunity. If he’s fishing at home, there’s no way. The results are disastrous.

“When you peg your sinker and it gets through the mat and through the sediment to the bottom, your sinker is beneath the junk,” he said. “If you don’t peg your sinker, when it breaks through, the weight will separate from the bait 4 to 6 inches and your bait will stay on top of that stuff.”

He concurs with Grigsby that his hook-up percentage is indeed better, but also doesn’t peg because he believes his bait takes on a different action unpegged.

“You have to let the fish tell you what they want,” Scroggins said, adding there are times when pegging is necessitated by the conditions that he’s fishing.

“I do peg it when I flip hydrilla in 15 feet, deeper grasses, like at Toledo Bend,” he noted. “In Florida, I do peg it some, but most of the time not. You can drop down to a lighter weight because you have no separation.”

Fishing deeper water or when flipping bushes or wood always necessitates pegging, but he’ll leave a quarter-inch so that it leaves everything loose when a bass takes his bait.

Scroggins points to a 2003 win on Lake Okeechobee where he flipped a 3-inch crawfish-style bait with a 1 1/2-ounce lead sinker behind those pegging and won off their leftovers.

Split Decision

Big Bite Baits pro Mike McClelland, another Bassmaster Elite veteran, also finds himself somewhere in the middle on the pegging debate.

When flipping heavy cover, the most important factor is that the bait gets through the cover and to the fish, he says.

“There is nothing more frustrating than your bait hanging up on the outside and your sinker getting through,” said McClelland.

McClelland, who snells his hooks, also leaves nearly an inch between the head of his tungsten sinker and the bobber stop. Dirty water scenarios fit this deal because when he’s shaking his bait in a laydown or bush, “that sinker is jumping up and down on the head of the bait or the hook itself, which I think will get you bites,” he said. “Especially when you snell your hook, that sinker hitting directly on the eye of the hook creates a clicking sound.”

If a punch skirt is part of the presentation mix, he’ll definitely peg, citing that the added bulk hangs onto cover, especially when flipping grass mats and hyacinths.

Weather also dictates his choice. If it’s colder, he’ll leave his bait unpegged to create drag, allowing the bait to fall slower. Once the water gets warmer and fish become active, McClelland suggests pegging the bait to allow it to fall faster and incite a reaction bite.

McClelland might have a clue as to what he’s talking about coming off a runner-up finish at the Sabine River, where he needed to have both rigs tied up. The most important part is getting the weight through the cover first. While the overhanging limbs and willow trees presented a challenge, he got the job done. Regardless of where he had to put his bait, McClelland noticed that his fish showed a preference between the two rigs during different days of the competition.

“When you’re fishing more sparse, isolated cover like stumps or laydowns that aren’t super thick, dock posts, I truly believe that not pegging is probably a better way to go,” he said.

McClelland believes that by not pegging his bait it allows bass to mouth the bait better.

“Because the fish isn’t picking up the weight, especially when you are using a 3/4-ounce weight or heavier, I really think that allows you to get a better hook-up ratio, especially when they aren’t eating it well,” he added. “They’re able to suck the bait into their mouth and the sinker doesn't necessarily have to go all the way in with the freedom you’ve created.”

Like Grigsby, McClelland agrees that there is a predator instinct triggered when bass see something a little bigger chasing something a little smaller.

“When that sinker separates from the bait that you are presenting, I truly believe that sometimes generates bites that you might not get if you had your sinker pegged,” McClelland said.

For that reason, he’ll opt to leave his sinker unpegged when swimming a Texas-rigged bait, especially through grass. Should he move offshore, like Scroggins, he’ll peg to ensure that his bait is presented properly.

Whether you peg or not, this will be a topic debated for the ages. Twenty years from now, we’ll be discussing such merits in the same light, and looking back at how the Nixon/Brauer debate has stood the test of time.