Bass Fishing - Flipping (1/4)

Flippin, just the name conjures up visions of big bass on short lines in heavy cover, mano a mano battles of epic proportions that add that large kicker that you need to significantly upgrade your tournament limit. Yes boys and girls, flippin is the way to really put some big bass in the livewell, whether you fish tournaments or just fish for fun and want to catch some of the largest bass of your life!

Flippin starts out with a 7 1/2 ft. rod that is an extra heavy model made just for flippin, usually called a "flippin stick." Most any conventional bait casting reel will work, as it is used mostly to
hold your line, not to cast with. There are times you may need to cast with it so I use a quality reel. I load the reel with Trilene twenty pound test mono or if I am fishing a lake that has really big bass and extra heavy cover I will fish with forty to sixty pound braided superline.

The lure is usually a weedless jig with a pork or plastic trailer, or a large plastic worm fished weedless with the sinker pegged to the hook with a toothpick inserted in the forward hole of the worm sinker, pushed in hard, then broken off. This keeps the weight from sliding down the line and wrapping around the tree branch and hanging up. Personally, I like the jig n pig, a weedless jig with a pork rind trailer. This has always been my go to lure when I needed a kicker to upgrade a tournament limit, or just to catch a limit when fishing is tough. I always added some sort of attractant to the lure while fishing, there are many brands, most work, my favorite is the Berkley brand ( I get no money from any tackle company, I just tell you the brands that worked best for me ).

I took a small Tupperware container and screwed it to the front rail of my boat, I put some water in it and added a little attractant to it then after several casts I could just dip the jig and keep on fishing, without wasting time to stop, pick up the bottle of juice, open the bottle of juice,squirt some on my jig, close the bottle, put it down and make another cast. Maybe that scenario only takes 20 seconds, but, during the course of a tournament it can cost you 25 or 30 minutes,time you could use to catch that six pound kicker that would have jumped you from twelfth to first place.

Tournament fishing is not always won by the best fishermen, but by a good fisherman that understands time management, who does not waste any time during the day. He has his day planned out, his rods rigged and ready, spares for each rod neatly stored within easy reach, his movements are all done efficently, no time is wasted. He maximizes his fishing time and probably spends one to two more hours fishing than most of the other anglers in the tournament. Flippin is a method that maximizes your fishing time on the water. There is no other method that keeps your lure in the "premium strike zone" like flippin. Your lure is flipped to the center of a bush, allowed to flutter down to the bottom, bounced up and down a couple of times, then the lure is picked up out of the bush and flipped to the next bush. When you cast a lure to a bush forty feet away, your lure is only in the strike zone for ten percent of the cast, the rest of the time the lure is traveling through barren water.

Wasted time!! When the fishing is hot, and the fish are biting most lures thrown at them, casting and retrieving is a very effective method of locating active fish. But, when fishing is slow, flippin is the most efficient way of finding some biters and putting them in the boat!