Denny Brauer, possibly the most-accomplished flipper in all of bass fishing, knows that preventing his sinker from sliding up his line enhances precision by keeping that weight centered over the bait.
Brauer accomplishes this by sliding a Strike King tungsten weight onto his line, inserting a rubber nail peg through the weight and pulling it snug against the line. He’ll trim the back in of the nail peg, and then pull it farther into the sinker so he only pegs the top third of the weight.
Brauer finishes by snipping the peg as close as possible to the weight’s top edge.
“By doing it that way, it frees up the back of the slip sinker where the line’s coming out so the line can re-center,” Brauer said. “Be as careful as you can be in trimming that nail peg. There’s still a chance you might nick that line, so I’ll go ahead and pull (the weight) up a few inches and cut off that (bottom section) of my line so I’m absolutely certain I have not interfered with the line at all when I trimmed the rubber nail.”
Brauer said the bottom-line benefit of this rigging technique is preparing a bait that maintains optimal alignment for an effective presentation. Old-school pegging with toothpicks, he noted, leaves the line cocked to one side of the weight, and that mars the bait’s appearance and fall angle.
