Flippin' and Pitchin'
By: Allan Sikes
Most anybody who's ever set foot into a tackle shop or into any fishing retailer has seen these enormous rods called flippin' sticks. For most people these rods can be anywhere from 6 ½ ft to 8 ft long, and are big around as your thumb! Unless you've ever been to a lake where "hydrilla" and other thick vegetation exists, you would just leisurely walk by these rods and look at the drop shot rods on the end that fit your needs. But to the serious angler who deals with thick vegetation and wood cover on an everyday basis, these rods are a serious fishing tool than get the job done better than anything else!
On natural lakes where the dominant cover source is vegetation, bass bury into the thickest nastiest cover available especially during the "dog days" of summer. While most anglers fish till high sun when the heat is high with a top water bait like myself, the serious anglers then start to find the big expanses of lily pads or "hydrilla" close to deeper water and take out the flippin' stick. I then begin to pick apart every leaf and hole in the "hydrilla" and before you know it, I catch bass after bass!
It was introduced close to 30 years ago by Californian Dee Thomas and Dave Gliebe, and ever since then it has revolutionized bass fishing. The technique allowed anglers to put lures in hard places and to sneak up and catch fish with an arm length of line out! Before anybody really understood the technique, tournaments were being won all over the place on soft plastics flipped in to every crack an angler could find.
If you don't know how to flip and are interested in learning how, then check out the casting section in the HOW TO category on HOWTOBASS.COM they can hook you up with all tips on how to flip like a pro! Below are some of my own personal flippin' techniques.
- Use mono whenever the cover is sparse and isolated, use 30lb test and 1/2 oz. weight or greater for best results.
- Whenever cover is thick like "hydrilla" or even wood, use braided line from 30lb test all the way up to 80lb
test in extreme conditions. 1/2 oz. weight or better!
- When fishing thick "hydrilla" use a heavy weight such as a 1 ounce or 1 1/2 ounce weight to get
your bait through the green. If your budget allows you to, use tungsten weights there 1/2 the size of the same weight lead bullet sinker!
-WATCH YOUR LINE as it sinks to the bottom 75% of your flipping bites come on the fall and you may not feel it until its to late.
- Know how deep you're fishing. For example, if your fishing in 4ft of water and your bait sinks to 2 and stops, 9 out of 10 times its a fish so SET THE HOOK!
- Watch your line for any movement. Sometimes fish will bite and start swimming.
- If you didn't get bit on the initial fall, hop it a few times and then pull it out to flip to another spot.
- I usually don't wait to long when hopping. Just a few times is sufficient since bass bite on the fall more often than not, it makes more sense to get your bait out quick to make another fall in a different spot.
- In thick cover after hooking a fish you may have to go get it out of the cover if it tangles itself around it.
-Use scents when flipping. Not only does this help stimulate one of the bass senses, it acts as a lubricant when your bait is sliding thru the cover.
- If you're not getting bit then change up! Change the weight to see if bass want a slower or quicker fall, also change colors and baits. You'd be surprised how much a difference in strikes you could get if you change from a worm to a lizard or vice versa.
- Make sure the cover you intend to flip is close to deep water or channel bends just like any other structure fishing.
- In lakes where miles and miles of lily pads exist, one would only tire their arm out to pick any patch and start flipping so look for the usual drops, channels, humps, holes, etc!
- Have patience, your fishing for a single fish instead of schools. You may only get 4 or 5 bites but those bites can easily put 25lbs of bass in the boat, and the occasional 10+lber is not uncommon!
