(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
Bobby Lane might not have been born a flipper, but since discovering the technique in his teens he’s made it a key to his success. “Flipping and me get along,” he said, understating the obvious. In Florida, where 8 or 9 feet is deep and fish live shallower than 5 feet all year long, you better make fast friends with the big stick if you want to be competitive.
For Lane, there are certain keys to maximizing your effectiveness in heavy cover. The first is to only use a reel that allows you to keep your hand on the handle during the flip or pitch. He likes Abu-Garcia Revos that have the handle on the left, but depending on which of your hands is dominant you might prefer the opposite. Since many of the fish will eat the lure on the fall and then try to bury themselves in the nastiest places, your ability to land the majority of them depends on getting the hook set quickly and extracting them before they know what hit them.
There are, of course, times when you can’t get them out with even 65-pound Spiderwire Ultracast, and the vegetation may be too thick for the trolling motor. In those cases, Lane won’t hesitate to push his boat closer with the outboard.
Whether you’re flipping grass mats or pads, or even congregated laydowns bound by sawdust, it pays to be quiet and stealthy. “You’re casting into that fish’s home and you don’t want to spook the fish,” Lane explained. That means using the trolling motor as little as possible, but nevertheless keeping the boat in position to “attack the mat” if and when you do get a bite. He’s a strong advocate of keeping as much distance between you and the target as possible, but you also need to make sure that the lure doesn’t enter the water with “an explosion.” In order to hone his accuracy when he was younger, he practiced flipping into a taped-up coffee cup.
He approaches each target carefully, typically starting on the outside edges and then penetrating farther if he doesn’t get a bite. Typically he finds that in warmer weather, the fish tend to be on the outside and when it’s cold they burrow in a little deeper. That’s particularly true when fishing for Florida-strain largemouths, which tend to be particularly affected by the impacts of changing weather.
Lane also recommends looking for secondary targets around the densest and best-looking mats. “When you catch a big one, there’s always another big one around,” he said. Find other potential holding areas in the same zone that catch your eye and fish them deliberately. It can often pay to mill around for a while after catching that big fish, but it the area doesn’t produce quickly, let it rest for a while and then come back a little bit later.
If you want to learn some of the other keys to Lane’s flipping success, including his favorite shapes in the new Berkley Powerbait Mascent lineup, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
