Tungsten Weight Size Chart: What Size to Use for Every Bass Technique
Most anglers build this chart in their head over a few seasons. You look at the bank, feel the wind, and your hand goes to the right bag without thinking about it. This is that chart written down, built only from sizes we actually stock — so nothing here sends you hunting for a weight that does not exist.
Two things before the table. Weight size is a cover-penetration and fall-rate decision, not a hookset decision: a heavier weight does not drive a hook home any harder, that comes from your rod, your line and how much slack you pick up. And if you have come to tungsten from lead, the size that works will not be the size that looks right.
The size chart
Grams are converted at 1 oz = 28.3495 g and rounded to two decimals.
| Size (oz) | Grams | Lines that carry it | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/64 | 0.44 | Nail | The lightest Neko fall we make. Clear, shallow, pressured water. |
| 1/32 | 0.89 | Nail | Everyday Neko in 3 to 8 ft of clear water. |
| 3/64 | 1.33 | Nail | The Neko size most anglers settle on. |
| 1/16 | 1.77 | Worm, Nail, Wacky | Clear-water finesse Texas rig, heavier Neko, lightest wacky. |
| 7/64 | 3.10 | Nail | Neko in deeper water, wind or current. |
| 1/8 | 3.54 | Worm, Drop Shot, Wacky | Shallow Texas rig, shallow drop shot, slow-fall wacky. |
| 3/16 | 5.32 | Worm, Flipping, Drop Shot, Wacky, Shaky | The do-everything size. |
| 1/4 | 7.09 | Worm, Flipping, Drop Shot, Wacky, Shaky | The most-used size in bass fishing. |
| 5/16 | 8.86 | Worm | When 1/4 is too slow and 1/2 is too much. |
| 3/8 | 10.63 | Flipping, Drop Shot | Light flipping; deep or windy drop shot. |
| 1/2 | 14.17 | Worm, Flipping | Deep Texas rig dragging; flipping scattered cover. |
| 5/8 | 17.72 | Flipping | Thicker wood, brush, grass edges. |
| 3/4 | 21.26 | Flipping | Heavy flipping. |
| 1 | 28.35 | Flipping | The light end of punching. Thin, single-layer mats. |
| 1-1/4 | 35.44 | Flipping | A mat with real substance to it. |
| 1-1/2 | 42.52 | Flipping | Layered hydrilla and hyacinth. |
| 2 | 56.70 | Flipping | The heaviest weight we make. |
Two things fall straight out of that table. There is no 3/8 oz worm weight in our line — the ladder steps 1/4, 5/16, 1/2. The 5/16 oz is what you reach for when a 1/4 hangs up in the grass canopy instead of dropping through and a 1/2 blows past the strike zone. If you specifically want 3/8 oz on a worm hook, the 3/8 oz flipping weight slides on and fishes much the same way.
The other: 3/16 and 1/4 oz appear in five different lines. If you only ever buy two sizes, buy those two.
The three questions that set your weight
What am I trying to get through?
This one dominates the other two. On clean gravel or a sand flat, weight is purely fall rate and bottom contact, so go as light as conditions allow. In sparse grass, scattered wood or dock pilings, you need enough to keep the bait falling on a straight line without wedging in every fork. A matted canopy is a different problem entirely — you are not falling through cover, you are breaking a surface, and that takes far more mass than people expect.
How fast do I want it to fall?
Cold water, cold fronts, pressured fish and clear water all argue for slowing the fall down. Warm water, active fish, stained water and reaction bites argue for speeding it up. The whole point of the nail weight ladder is buying that control in small steps.
What is the wind and current doing?
This is the one most people under-weight for. A stiff wind puts a bow in your line, and a bowed line costs you bottom contact and bite detection long before it costs you the ability to reach bottom at all. If you cannot feel what the weight is touching, go heavier.
Texas rig and worm weights: 1/16 to 1/2 oz
1/4 oz does most of the work. Drop to 1/8 or 1/16 oz in clear water, on a slow fall, or over sparse cover where you want the bait to hang. Step up to 5/16 or 1/2 oz for wind, depth or thicker grass. Full range in worm weights.
Flipping and punching: 3/16 to 2 oz
The flipping line genuinely starts at 3/16 oz, and the light end matters more than people give it credit for. Scattered wood, dock posts and the outside edge of a grass line do not need punching weight — 1/4 to 1/2 oz pitches quietly and keeps a fall that a pressured fish will still eat.
Punching a matted canopy of hydrilla or hyacinth is a different job. Plan on 1 to 2 oz, and most anglers settle around 1 to 1-1/4 oz. Anything lighter tends to sit on top of the mat rather than break through it. Our range tops out at 2 oz; some anglers fish 2-1/2 or 3 oz in the very thickest Florida and California mats.
Drop shot: 1/8 to 3/8 oz
Drop shot logic is not Texas rig logic, and importing one into the other is where a lot of sizing advice goes wrong. On a drop shot the weight sits on the bottom below the bait on a dropper tag. A fish that inhales the bait is not lifting or dragging the weight, so you are not choosing weight to keep the bite subtle — you are choosing it to hold position and keep you connected.
3/16 or 1/4 oz is the everyday starting point in shallow to mid depths. 3/8 oz is what most anglers move to for deep water, wind or current. 3/8 is the heaviest we make; for very heavy current some anglers go heavier still. Shape matters too — see the drop shot range for skinny versus tear drop.
Neko and wacky: 1/64 to 1/4 oz
3/64 oz is the Neko size most anglers land on. Go lighter in clear, shallow or pressured water, heavier for depth, wind or current.
One thing worth being clear about: our wacky weights are weights, not finished jigheads — you add them to your own hook and stick bait. The weedless models carry a weed guard, not a hook. If you want the hook already attached, that is the shaky heads, which are built on a 4/0.
Shaky heads
Two sizes, 3/16 and 1/4 oz, both on a 4/0 hook. 3/16 is the finesse option for clear water and a slow presentation; 1/4 gets down faster and holds better in wind or deeper water.
A rough depth guide
- 0 to 5 ft — Texas rig 1/16 to 3/16 oz; drop shot 1/8 to 3/16 oz.
- 5 to 10 ft — Texas rig 1/4 oz; drop shot 3/16 to 1/4 oz.
- 10 to 20 ft — Texas rig 1/4 to 5/16 oz; drop shot 1/4 to 3/8 oz.
- 20 ft and deeper — Texas rig 5/16 to 1/2 oz; drop shot 3/8 oz.
Treat those as starting points. Wind and current move you up a step more often than depth does.
Why tungsten sizes look small
Our weights are a 97% tungsten alloy, around 18.0 g/cm3 against lead's 11.34 — roughly 1.6 times denser. The same ounce takes up about 37% less volume. It is worth being precise about what that means, because it is easy to over-read: 37% is the drop in volume. The linear dimensions come down by about 14%, since that is the cube root of the volume change. A tungsten weight is noticeably slimmer and shorter than the lead you are used to, not a third of the length.
Paint struggles to bond to tungsten because the metal is so hard, which is why cheap coated weights flake the first time they hit rock. Ours use the EdgeGuard No-Chip finish, and the size is stamped into the weight, so a scuffed one is still readable in the bottom of a box.
If you want to go deeper on one technique, start with picking a Texas rig weight by cover, depth and current.