(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.)
Florida pro Randall Tharp makes no secret of the fact that he’s happiest when he’s putting a flipping stick through its paces. In addition to tailoring his tackle specifically to the short-line conditions at hand, he also works hard to analyze the cover in front of him and the pattern on a given day.
It’s all about maximum efficiency, he said, and that means he pitches more than he flips. You want to entice the greatest number of bites and catch the highest percentage of those that bite, and making a high number of presentations is the key to that happening. Fortunately, he believes that you’ll “put more big fish in the boat with this than with anything else.”
The biggest mistake he sees amateurs make with the big stick is not controlling the fall of the lure. “You do not want your bait to pendulum away,” he explained. “You want a vertical fall.” He accomplishes that with a controlled slack line, following the lure’s descent with his rod tip as it heads toward the bottom.
He also cautioned that you should avoid a noisy entry of the lure into the water. Accordingly, he keeps his reel brakes “fairly loose” to allow him to pitch with minimal effort. He thumbs the spool gently the whole time, feathering it back as it approaches the target.
Rod position isn’t just crucial during the lure’s fall. He advised that anglers need to be mindful of where the rod tip ends up when the cast is completed, so as not to be out of position to set the hook. Sometimes you can let the fish have the lure, but other times you need to be lightning fast in order to put them in the boat.
There are four main types of cover that he flips and pitches: Deep grass, docks, laydowns and bushes. With all of them, he’s a firm believer in starting off your practice period by finding the isolated versions of that cover, which allows him to be laser-focused on dialing in his presentation, rather than searching for a needle in a haystack. For example, if he thinks that marinas might be key, he’ll start with the ones with relatively few slips, rather than the ones with many. If that works, he can branch out and expand the pattern from there. “Isolated cover is easier to pattern them on,” he said.
Deep grass, which he characterized as being from 4 to 20 feet deep, is one of the toughest areas to flip, but it’s also the one where flipping shines the most. There’s no other bait that gets in those canopies so easily. Once he has the fish located, he doesn’t work the bait a lot. “That just wastes time,” he said, and then added that “If you’re not getting bites, experiment with your rate of fall.”
He breaks down docks into two categories – those with poles and those with floats, although he said those that combine the two are even better, especially the ones with a ladder as well. They can be in 6 inches of water or floating over 100 feet and they’ll still hold fish, although he said he typically does not find them suspended more than 10 feet below the surface. A tube and a jig are his major tools, but the key element is finding a pattern. “Early in the year I’ll start with the shallowest post,” he said. If he finds fish there, there may be no reason to fish the deeper ends, or it may be the opposite way around. “Every bite you get tells you something.”
With laydowns, he’s tempted to start off with a “premium pitch” into the heart of the tree, and that’s where he’ll usually drop a tube, jig or beaver-style bait, unless he’s catching multiple fish off of each one. In that case, he’ll pick around the edges, first. It’s the same thing with bushes, which require him to beef up his tackle and throw jigs in the ½- to 5/8-ounce range, or a slightly lighter tube.
While his tackle choices are highly refined for each situation, he advised anglers just starting out to get a 7’6” medium-heavy or heavy stick and pair it with a high-speed reel spool with heavy fluorocarbon. Get some hooks and weights, a bag of plastics, and get to work. It’s a year-round tactic that wins tournaments from coast to coast.
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