Ugly sticks are great but lack sensitivity, something crucial when fishing worms, jigs and finesse lures. I have always had a thing for Berkley IM-7 graphite, especially the Lightning rod series. Rapala makes a great series of graphite rods as well and full of backbone for ripping fish from heavy cover - something you will encounter a lot of in Texas. I'm not a huge fan of braided lines and I think they are very bad for the environment, but they don't stretch like mono and fluorocarbon. If you don't like mono, try Seaguar Fluorocarbon - they invented it and still have the best fluoro to date.
As far as reels, you simply can't go wrong with Shimano regardless of the style, but mostof the Japanese manufactured reels like Daiwa and Okuma are built very well and are easy to clean and find replacement parts if need be. I have a variety of Quantum, Mitchell, Pflueger, Pinnacle, and m my personal favorite, Abu Garcia,especially the older Ambassaduer series baitcasters.
Plastic worms will catch fish anywere there is bass, the type and height of bottom vegetation will determine the style of rigging you will want to use. Wacky worms seem to work wonders, as well as a weedless Spider-Slider head rigged with either a 4-inch slider worm or a 4-inch Berkley Powerworm. Crankbaits have caught me some of the biggest Large and Smallmouths I have ever caught (particularly Rapala's Shad Rap 2.75" firetiger shallow-runner), but nothing really compares to live native chubs or shiners, hellgrammites or de-clawed crayfish. Jig-and-Pig is also popular down south and I have recently seen a new "lure" called the Umbrella rig, which is actually a series of several lures attached to a wire frame resembling an umbrella designed to imitate an entire school of baitfish.