Selecting the best type and size of sinker is the last bastion of rigging refinement.

Depending on your rigging refinements, dragging a Carolina rig can be a most productive experience or an extremely frustrating exercise. A soft-plastic lure trailing a heavy sinker can be extremely effective on bottom-hugging bass, but weeds, rocks, stumps, logs, and other bottom debris can wreak havoc on your tackle through snagging. Lighter sinkers can help, but this switch also reduces feel for the bottom and results in missed strikes.

Through years of tinkering, professional bass anglers have discovered that they can keep their lures bouncing along the bottom almost snaglessly by carefully selecting different shaped sinkers for their Carolina rigs.

Weedless Weights

When fishing around vegetation, Arkansas pro Scott Rook chooses a bullet-shaped sinker. “It slides through grass the smoothest,” says Rook of the classic worm weight. “Its pointed nose and streamlined body penetrate and slide among weed stalks while a round sinker plows the vegetation, causing grass to ball up on the weight.”

If Rook wants to use a lighter weight for working through sparse weeds, he relies on a Mojo Rig sinker. The long, slim profile of this weight distributes the weights horizontally, allowing it to wheedle through vegetation. Rook also uses this sinker style for fishing open-water spots on deep, clear reservoirs such as Missouri’s Table Rock Lake. The two-time BASS Masters Classic qualifier rigs the weight on 8- to 10-pound-test mono with a Peg-It rubber pegging system for clear-water applications.

While fishing with Texas pro Kelly Jordon on Lake Fork, I discovered the advantages of tungsten weights such as Lake Fork Tackle’s Mega-Weights and Excalibur’s TG Weights for fishing weeds. The weights are made of tungsten-nickel alloy, a material about 25 percent heavier than lead. Heavy sinkers are smaller as a result, helping to fish through grass without grass balling on the weight too badly. Keep your rod tip high, hopping the Carolina-rigged finesse worm through patches of hydrilla. Thin baits help this presentation, too. Working the Carolina rig through weeds paid off as I caught a 9-pound 6-ounce largemouth, a postspawn fish holding in thick cover.

“They’re easier to use than bigger, bulkier weights,” says Jordon of the Mega Weight. “Being compact, they sink a little faster and comes through cover better.”

Weights For Wood

Scott Rook and Kelly Jordon favor bullet-shape weights when pulling Carolina rigs through standing timber. Rook opts for a bullet weight if the timber-laden area also contains grass. If a spot has a rocky bottom and timber, he prefers an egg-shape sinker.

B. A. S. S. Angler of the Year Davy Hite selects a homemade pencil-shaped sinker similar to a Mojo weight for fishing most types of cover, but he particularly likes this weight style for working stump-filled terrain. Hite believes the elongated sinker allows him to use a heavier weight to maintain feel of the bottom, yet its shape slides over stumps with minimal snagging. “Once you get into the thick stuff where the big ones live, you don’t have the opportunity to catch those bass if the sinker gets hung up all the time,” Hite says.

The Carolina-rig expert slips a 3/4- or 1-ounce weight on 17- to 20-pound-test main line and adds a glass bead and barrel swivel. He ties on an 8- to 14-pound-test leader and varies its length depending on cover and visibility. On cloudy, rainy days, Hite adjusts to reduced visibility by shortening the leader to keep his lure close to the weight. In clear water and on bright days, he fishes a longer leader to keep the bait away from the rest of his hardware.