Scroggins loves big lead eggs

Big lead eggs work for Terry "Big Show" Scroggins.

Few Bassmaster Elite Series anglers have a bigger appetite than Terry “Big Show” Scroggins. His grill skills are large, and so are his Carolina rig weights. In 2008, at Falcon Lake, Texas, Scroggins brought in the second largest 5-fish limit in BASS history with a Carolina rig. His five monsters totaled 44 pounds, 4 ounces. And right now, as bass all over America are in some phase of the spawn, few presentations work better than the “ball and chain.” There’s nothing fancy or secretive about Scroggins’ approach to Carolina rigging — just go big! “I don’t mess around with 1/2-ounce or 3/4-ounce weights unless I’m in really thick vegetation. If I can get away with it, in rocks, shellbeds, pea gravel or clay, I’m going to use a full 1-ounce lead egg sinker every time,” says Scroggins who has won more than a million dollars faster than just about anybody in the history of professional fishing. “There’s two reasons I use a big 1-ounce lead egg sinker on my Carolina rigs. First, with any water current at all, that egg-shaped weight will roll across the bottom, so you don’t have to impart a ton of unnatural action. You can sort of just hold your rod still and let the big heavy egg impart all the subtle action by rolling around. Second, when you do move it, that big 1-ounce weight creates a bigger disturbance. But I think the rolling action has as much to do with the success of it as the heaviness does,” said the longtime Team Toyota angler. Scroggins uses a 4-foot, 15-pound-test monofilament leader, and 20-pound-test mono for his main line. “You can buy a 1-ounce lead egg sinker at just about any tackle department in America. It’s what I grew up fishing with as a teenager in the St. Johns River 25 years ago,” said the always easygoing Scroggins. And today, at age 41, big lead eggs are working just fine for “Big Show” on bass fishing’s biggest stage.