By David A. Brown
Special to BassFan
Targeted presentations – they're used to put a bait in a specific spot; ideally, right in front of a responsive fish. It could be a sight-fishing scenario, or just a hunch about the likely home of your mossback opponent.
Reeds, hydrilla, buck brush, lily pads, laydowns; the potential targets are many, but the basic presentation styles of flipping and pitching afford that sense of purposed intent – kind of like picking out the specific steak you want at the butcher’s shop.
FLW Tour pro Jay Yelas has fine-tuned his game in both styles. Acknowledging the complementary relationship, he offered some insight on his preferences and particulars for both techniques.
A Time and a Place
In any scenario of targeted fishing, Yelas uses a combination of techniques, with pitching accounting for about 80 to 90 percent of his action – especially on heavily pressured public waters.
“Most of the time, I pitch more than I flip because you get more bites if you stay back off the fish and that lends itself to pitching,” Yelas said. “This is especially true in clear water or extremely shallow water.
“The exception to this is when you have dirtier water or really thick cover, where you need to be in close. That’s when you go to the flipping technique”
On older water bodies, where time and waves have deteriorated a lot of the cover, Yelas said the scattered stuff is what he likes. Isolated pieces of wood, for example, may be light on numbers, but that’s where the quality lives.
As quality bass aren’t easily fooled, distance becomes your greatest ally.
“Most of the time, you have to (present a bait) 20 to 30 feet and it’s hard to flip that far,” Yelas said. “I have had some good flipping bites on this isolated cover, but that has mostly been in muddy water with less than a foot visibility.”
The scenario’s precision requirement also influences Yelas’ presentation.
“If I need to hit one little spot in the cover the size of a coffee cup, I can be more accurate with flipping,” he said. “Also, flipping is more time-efficient because you don’t have to reel in line after every presentation. That’s why flipping will never go away.”
Baits and Tackle
Yelas splits his pitching/flipping efforts with two main bait setups:
> A Texas-rigged 4-inch Yamamoto Flappin Hog with a 1/4- to 1/2-ounce weight and a 5/0 Gamakatsu EWG Superline hook. He occasionally substitutes a 5-inch Senko or a lizard, but he said the creature bait has a lot going for it.
“That Flappin Hog has so much salt in it that it’s heavier and that makes the presentations easier,” Yelas said. “The heavier your bait, the easier it is to put it wherever you want it.”
> A 1/2- or 5/8-ounce Yamamoto flipping jig with a Flappin Hog or 4-inch Yamamoto Craw, Double Tail, or Swim Senko depending on the action needed, relevant to the cover. Jig weight is based on water depth, cover thickness and wind strength.
For both techniques, Yelas uses a 7 1/2-foot extra-heavy Kistler Z Bone flipping stick with a 7.5:1 Team Lew’s Lite reel. Twenty-pound fluorocarbon is his standard line choice, but he’ll use braid in deep grass because of the no-stretch benefit.
“This is a lightweight outfit and that really helps reduce fatigue in a day of fishing,” he said. “I think the high gear ratio is very important because a lot of times you’ll set the hook and those fish will come right out of cover and you need to come tight on them right away.”
Presentation
In the textbook pitching presentation, the bait is palmed to lightly load the rod tip before the presentation. Yelas has this deal down solid, but when he’s burning bank, he’ll skip that opening step.
“You don’t always have to grip the bait,” he said. “When you get into a rhythm and you’re going down the bank, you can time the swing of the bait to hit your targets.
Yelas says the biggest fish generally prefer to hang out near the largest pieces of cover.
“That makes it more time-efficient when you need that pitching presentation. And that’s another reason for the high-speed reel – you can wind the bait back in and get another pitch."
Of the proper form, Yelas said: “As the bait is about to hit the water, I raise my rod tip and thumb the spool so I get a quiet presentation. That quiet presentation is really important because those fish will spook if your entry is too loud.”
Yelas ends his pitch with his rod in the 12 o’clock position and then lowers it as the bait enters the water. That allows the bait to fall to the bottom on a slack line.
“A common mistake I see people making is not finishing a pitch with the rod high so they can drop it and put slack in the line,” he said. “When the bait hits the water, the line is tight and the bait pendulums back toward the boat.
“That’s important because you want the bait to have a nice vertical presentation.”
Make It Count
Yelas’ targeting tips:
> On sunny days, pitch or flip the shady side of cover.
> If it's windy, fish the up-current side where the fish will face into the wind and gobble what blows their way. Of course, there’s a limit to this principle and if the waves are slapping, the fish might slide back and use the structure as a current break
> Start wide and move progressively inward.
“I’ll generally try to pitch to the outside edge of the cover first, where I have a high-percentage chance of getting a fish out,” he said. “If I don’t get bit there, I’ll go into the heart of the cover.
“You don’t always get them out, but you have to put it in there to have a shot at catching them.”
> Quality fish could be on any piece of cover, but the ones you want usually stake out the premium spots.
“The bigger fish tend to like the bigger pieces of cover,” he said. “If you pull into a cove with 10 pieces of cover and one is noticeably bigger, that’s probably where the big fish are.”
Other promising features include blown-in weeds, which add extra cover to a spot, and windblown logs that settle against bushes or weeds. For laydowns, Yelas stresses the wisdom of total coverage.
“Always fish the entire tree – especially the rood wads,” he said.
Parting tip: After you catch one in cover, always check your line and strip off 3 to 4 feet if it’s abraded, and retie your hook.
If you’ve made the perfect pitch or flip, why waste it on a broken line?
