By I.M. Bradley
Any angler can go randomly flipping around grass or cover and catch a few bass. That should not surprise anyone, but why just settle for a few fish when you can catch more and better bass. The key to better flipping comes from knowing when to fish a quick-sinking lure or a slow-falling lure, and what to do after the lure settles to the bottom.
FLW Tour and B.A.S.S. professional angler Jason Christie always thinks flipping first when approaching a tournament. He’s so good at it, he even has a new signature series flipping rod coming out.
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Christie has made his living fishing shallow.
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Catching better bass for Christie comes down to how fast the lure falls, or “rate of fall.”
“For me, I pick the lure and weight by the water clarity,” he said. “The clearer the water; the faster I want the lure to fall.”
Christie says that when fishing impoundments with gin clear water, like Beaver Lake and Table Rock, he wants a fast falling lure anytime the water temperature is more than 70 degrees. When water temperature gets very cold, however, he’ll begin considering a slower-sinking jig for his flipping.
The technique of flipping is done on a short line. With the reel in free spool and thumb holding the spool motionless, the angler takes the jig in his off hand (the one not holding the rod) and swings the rod to pendulum the bait toward a target in the cover, while removing the tension his thumb has been applying to the spool. The result is that the lure hits the target as quietly as possible, right in the face of the bass. Bass then strike the lure out of a feeding response or reaction strike. Christie believes that more than 75 percent of the strikes he gets while flipping are reaction strikes.
