Flipping Tubes

Flipping tubes is widely thought to have started, or at least taken off, on the Arkansas River. It was something of a closely-guarded secret until Denny Brauer used the technique to win the 1998 Bassmaster Classic at High Rock Lake, N.C. That year – the year he started flipping tubes – he also won FLW Angler of the Year and three other Bassmaster events.

Now tube-flipping is a staple for many top tour pros, particularly in the dog days of summer. Just ask Brauer. At High Rock, he "caught them really well there flipping a jig in the official practice period," he said. That was in early July, 30 days before the competition. "When I came back for the tournament (in early August), they simply weren't interested in (the jig)."

Over the course of those 30 days, the fish hadn't moved much, but they had switched from an early-summer crawfish bite to a mid- to late-summer shad pattern. And because jig-and-trailer combinations resemble crawfish, he had to find something to flip that looked more like a shad. He reached for the tube and flipped his way to the win, by nearly 10 pounds over George Cochran.

Tube Talk

"The tubes I was using in the '98 Classic just drove me crazy," Brauer said. "They would always slide down the hook, and they weren't designed for flipping at all. They had single-wall bodies for an open hook application, and were too short (4 inches) for a typical worm hook, let alone a 4/0 flipping hook."

After his Classic win, he sat down with longtime sponsor Strike King to develop a tube to his liking, and the Flip-N-Tube (now the Denny Brauer Pro-Model Flip-N-Tube) was born. At the time, it was the first of its kind, featuring a solid head to stay on a hook better, plus double-walled plastic and an additional half-inch of length to handle a 4/0 widegap flipping hook.

There's nothing fancy about the way he rigs the tube: Texas-rigged with the hook point barely exposed, a.k.a. "Texposed" or "skin-hooked" with a 4/0 Mustad Ultrapoint wide gap tube hook, and pegged with a 1/8- to 1-ounce lead bullet weight. ("I peg it with a wooden toothpick, the same as I've done for 30 years," he said.) If he's going with a dark color, he'll use a black bullet weight. With lighter colors, he uses bare lead.

"I flip it the same way as I would a jig" – flip, one or two hops, and repeat – "and I always set the hook straight up," he said. "There's really no difference. The only thing I'm doing is modifying the speed of the fall by using different weights. Generally, I want a faster fall in warm water and a slow one in cold. A 5/16-ounce weight seems to be very good overall, but I'll go down as far as 1/8 if I'm just pitching at isolated stuff in shallow water, where I want a more subtle presentation.

"And I'll go as heavy as it takes to get through heavy cover. In fact, a tube with a 1-ounce weight is easier to flip than a jig in some places, anywhere there's heavy matted vegetation."

In heavy cover, Brauer also applies a spray-on attractant, more for its lubricating qualities than its scent. He said: "Most of our baits today have enough garlic and salt already. I'm basically using it as a lubricant, to help (the tube) slide through the thick stuff. I use BANG, because it's about the handiest to spray on, but any of them work."

Other Options?

On High Rock that August the water was at its clearest and warmest, as it is in many lakes during the summer months. Brauer said: "The clearer the water, the more fish seem to prefer a smaller-profile bait, and the warmer the water, the more they seem to switch to a shad or bluegill bite. The tube does little better job (than a jig) in those situations."

But that doesn't mean that he only has a tube rigged up in summer. While he does have seasonal rules of thumb – cool water = jigs, warm = tubes – he always has at least one of each on deck. "The tube just gives you another option (to flip)," he said. "It's a whole different presentation, a different look. I always go out there pretty open-minded and just see if I can find a preference.

"Oftentimes you can go through an area and catch them on one, then come back through and get them to bite the other. The bottom line is that I never go out without both of them tied on."

He acknowledges the effectiveness of worms, creature baits or other plastics for summer flipping, but he prefers simplicity. He doesn't like to complicate anything, especially lure choice: "With me, it's pretty basic – I'm either flipping a tube or a jig. It makes packing a lot easier."

He added: "Every once in a while I will experiment with a worm or a (Strike King creature-type) Wild Thang, but about the only time I deviate from (tubes or jigs) is in the summer time around Lake of the Ozarks and Truman. We just don't have many tournaments in the summer anymore."

Other Flipping Gear

> 7' 6" Team Daiwa Denny Brauer Flipping and Pitching Stick; Daiwa TD-X baitcaster (6.3:1); 25-pound original Stren mono (clear) and 50-pound Stren Superbraid. He said: "If it's a sparse cover situation or a boat dock, I'll go with the lighter mono or even fluorocarbon. But if I'm going into any thick stuff at all, it's 50-pound braid. I've been leaning more and more toward braid, just because you totally eliminate the break-off issue and get better penetration on bigger fish. Bigger fish have so much more jaw power, you'll lose fish on tubes due to a lack of penetration. Braided line really helps."