Bass Fishing - Flipping (4/4)

Last time we talked about bass in reeds, today we will talk about bass in wood and brush. Bass usually relate tight to some type of cover when they are in a neutral to negative mood, making them hard to catch, as they won't hit reaction baits ( spinnerbaits, crankbaits ) very well. They can be tempted with a slow moving bait placed right in their face, but they will not move far
to chase a fast moving bait. When they are in a positive mood they are out looking for a meal, and reaction baits are the best tool for finding and catching them.

Flippin is a shallow water system that can put fish on your line when nothing else will. Most of your flippin is done in water less ten feet deep, with the majority done in less than five feet. In most lakes there are usually some bass in shallow water. Shallow water is different in different places, in the South it may be three feet in a lake that has little water over fifteen or twenty
feet, here in Southern California's deep clear lakes, shallow may mean ten feet in a lake that may be two hundred feet deep.

Shallow bass need cover to feel safe, the thicker the better. If they can't see you, they probably think you don't see them. Although you can't see them you know the types of places they hide, and you flip your jig into their hidey-holes. Think of how you stand under a tree to get out of the sun, it has a trunk that goes up to branches which spread out above you, a bush is the same to a bass. A bush has a small trunk which may go up only six or eight inches before the branches go outward, but this gives the fish all the room he needs to hide, and if you make a quiet approach, you can get very close without scaring the fish. Use your trolling motor on the lowest speed, and use the wind as much as possible to move your boat into position.

On windy days it does not matter as much, as the waves are making all kinds of noise and they are also making the water muddy which covers your approach even more. This is one of the best reasons to fish the windy side of the lake, the other is the wind blows the plankton up to the shore and the baitfish follow to eat them, and in the muddy turbulent water, are easy prey for predators.

One good strategy for pressured fish, is to drop your anchor out in deeper water and quietly drift back to the brush area you want to fish. Sometimes when its very windy, its very hard to stand safely in the front of the boat, as its going up and down and side to side, but when it is anchored the front goes up and down and the back is much more stable. I have seen many days when it was nearly impossible to stand in the front of a wildly rocking boat, let alone make precision casts to small openings in the brush. A stable boat makes casting to small openings much easier, and when its windy, you only get one flip to a bush and your gone.

When fishing is tough, you some-times need to flip many times to the same bush to get the fish to hit the jig. I fished a tournament at Lake Powell one October, when the only way to get bit was to find a thick bush on a steep shoreline near the main lake channel, tie the boat to the bush, ( the water was too deep to anchor ) and wait ten minutes for the commotion to subside, then spend at least fifteen minutes probing every nook and crannie of the brush pile. I did not catch many bass, only six in two days, but that gave me a top ten finish, when most anglers caught only one or two and many blanked on a lake that is usually very good.

The anglers that saw the usual patterns not working and changed their tactics to fishing slow and even slower, caught the most fish!