(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.)
Elite Series sophomore Derek Hudnall is hesitant to call flipping and pitching his “strengths.” He likes to think that he’s versatile and willing to do what it takes to be successful. “If you call it a strength, you’re going to do it all the time,” he said. Instead he prefers to think of them as “comfort zones,” and has no doubt that they’ve produced more of his tournament winnings than any other techniques.
“If that bite’s there and I can find it, I would be 100-percent comfortable with that flipping stick in my hand,” he explained. He mixes up a concise selection of jigs and soft plastics to get the job done from north to south, and from coast to coast.
While jigs may seem generally unchanged from their earliest iterations, Hudnall is clear that “all jigs are not created equally.” When it’s early in the season and water temperatures are still low, bass generally are relatively inactive. They don’t want to expend a lot of energy for their food. They want a big meal. That’s when he glues a rod with the Missile Jigs Ike’s Flip Out Flipping Jig in his hands and gets to work. He gets especially dialed in with it when he has a decent limit and goes hunting for one or two big bites on isolated cover where big fish first move up to eat.
That jig essentially never leaves his rod all year. Later, when bluegill are spawning, he just fishes it differently. “I’ll take that same jig and I’ll swim it,” he said. However, there are times when he adds Ike’s Mini Flip Flipping Jig into the mix. Unlike most other finesse jigs, it has a quality weed guard and a hook that won’t bend out. He rarely goes below a half-ounce because he wants a lure that he can cast accurately and that penetrates cover easily. When the bite is tough, this is his go-to. He also said it’s a smallmouth killer. “They hate a jig,” he said.
He keeps his jig and trailer colors simple: green-pumpkin all around, all over the place, black and blue in stained or dirty water, and a perch or bluegill pattern around the bluegill spawn.
If he could have one bait to throw 12 months out of the year it would be a jig, but he also loves to pitch and flip soft plastics behind tungsten, and in that instance he prefers one lure over all of the others. “I am a D Bomb guy,” he said. “The tail action is extremely subtle, but it’s very fluid.” It’s lifelike and soft, which means more bites and more fish in the boat.
He’s also been experimenting extensively with the Tokyo Rig, which he calls “basically a dropshot for power fishermen.” His favorite lure so far is a 6.5” Missile Baits Quiver Worm, which helped company founder John Crews earn a 2nd-place finish at the St. Johns River earlier this year.
If you want to learn some of the other ways that Hudnall employs flipping and pitching for tour-level success, and get some information about the St. Croix Legend Xtreme rods that he calls “the most sensitive rod I’ve ever put in my hands,” check out his full video, filmed at the Bassmaster Classic in Alabama, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
