Welcome to the cold clear waters where the big brutes lurk, to massive woods, wetlands
and wide open country where big game trophies, elusive game birds and all living things reside.
Welcome to a world where the exciting challenge of outdoor adventure takes away tensions and
the time clock never ticks.
Welcome to another educational outdoor video, custom produced by Dave Winckelman Productions
with you in mind.
Come along for explosive fishing action and never to be forgotten hunting trips.
Whatever the creature, we'll be your teacher.
And that's not all.
We'll be meeting the gurus of the great outdoors, guides and outfitters, conservationists and
tournament pros.
So at least for a while, put everything else aside, sit back, relax and let the wonders
of a wilder world take you wherever you want to be.
You know, probably no other fish has captured the imaginations of fishermen over the years
more than the largemouth bass.
To catch them, there are more techniques than ever before involving special rods and reels,
specific kinds of line and tons of other tools that make each one unique.
The problem is many bass fishermen have all the right tools but really don't know how
to go about finding bass and to me that's a little like putting the cart before the
horse and it's really too bad because if they knew the true meaning of one single word,
catching lots of bass could take the place of collecting lots of tackle.
Are you ready?
The word is cover and the thicker the better.
All bass relate to it throughout their entire lives because it provides security from predators
and a place to ambush food whether it's submerged trees, weeds, rocks, docks or other kinds
of cover, bass are obsessed with finding the best possible cover that their world can offer.
And although deep water does contain cover, more often than not the best types are found
shallow where bright sunlight produces plush vegetation and scatters shoreline debris.
Because cover is so important to all bass, that's exactly why this next half hour will
be devoted to a very serious look at shallow water types and how you can go to undercover
if you will to catch more and bigger bass.
So what do you say?
Let's take on this first segment as it takes us to one of old bucket mouth's favorite hiding
spots, cattails.
Now as you start to understand the large mouth bass, one of the first things you're going
to find out is that if they possibly can, anytime they can, they're going to try and
work from an ambush position.
The pattern I'm going to show you today allows for that in an ideal situation.
Now most people refer to this material here as cattails or cane, either one doesn't make
any difference about the same plant.
But it allows the bass the ideal situation, particularly for big bass, and I'm telling
you they use it a lot.
But you know like most other patterns, all of this is not going to hold fish.
Some of it's got fish, some of it doesn't have fish, and what I want to show you is
why some areas of the cane are going to hold fish, why some areas and some places in the
cane will hold big fish, and why other areas that to the untrained eye might look exactly
the same won't hold any fish at all.
A couple of the key factors that you're looking for are this.
First off you want to make sure that you've got a few feet of water on the outside.
If the cane is growing too close to shore and it just grows right there and it's only
a foot or so deep, the odds of it holding any amount of fish, particularly big fish,
are about slim to none.
If the cane grows directly to the bottom with the thin leading edge, they offer little or
no cover to hold feeding bass.
On the other hand, thick cane beds, especially those with floating canopy-like edges, provide
big bass with the perfect sanctuary.
They not only have a variety of forage, but give the bass an optimum ambush point as well.
Spots like this can hold big fish all summer.
This stuff kind of looks like a veritable jungle, but if there's one thing I can tell
you about it, it's ambush.
Just think ambush.
Every time you're looking for areas, what would give them the absolute optimum ambush
point?
Like this pocket in here.
Key is this.
When they sit up in these shaded pockets like this and up inside of that cane, they're going
to work at one specific way, period.
And that's right on the edge, tucked up underneath it and facing right on the outside.
Probably the biggest single downfall guys have fishing this stuff is that they're afraid
to throw up in it.
Get the wrong kind of bait or wrong type of choice and they don't get up into where the
fish are and they'll fish right by all kinds of fish, never even knowing they're there.
Key is this.
You're going to have to throw the bait, use a type of bait, I'm fishing a jig and a pig
here, with a fiber weed guard on it, but a type of a bait that you can throw right up
into the last foot or foot and a half of it, chunk it right up in there, and just work
that bait a little bit.
He's going to sit there and take it out.
You're going to get hung up some, I'll guarantee you that.
You're going to lose some baits once in a while maybe, but if you'll get in there, you'll
roust out some fish and some awful big ones.
Come on.
Come on, Ty.
Come here.
There's a number of different families of baits that work well for fishing the cane.
One is a single spin spinner bait like this.
I prefer a single over a tandem because you have less chance of the blade hooking up in
the cane.
Now you might also consider putting a plastic trailer or something on the back.
Some days that'll work better than others.
Basically my favorite bait for this condition is a jig and a pig.
Just a weedless jig with a plastic weed guard like so.
I've got just an eel on the back here.
You can put a little pork chunk or whatever, but I'd rather use pork on here than a plastic
bait because it doesn't rip off so easy.
With this, you can throw it way back into the cane, and this keeps it from being hung
up, and you can work it right back out through, get to the edge, just leave it dropped down.
Now basically, a plastic worm works the same way as that jig and a pig does.
They're rigged up Texas style like so.
They're weedless, but you'll find that sometimes with a soft plastic worm here, it'll hang
up in the cane.
Fourth family is the spoons, weedless spoon, and this is another very favorite one of mine.
There's a silver minnow here, and I've put a rubber skirt off the back of a spinner bait
on the back of it just to give it a little bit more of a swimming motion.
Again, this is weedless enough you can throw this way back up in the edge and then just
let it flutter right down the edge.
Any of the four work.
The key is what you've got to do is find out what the bass choose or prefer that particular
day.
Too many guys get hung up and say, hey, I like to fish a jig and a pig or a spinner
bait, and they never give them that variety and give the bass the chance to make the choice.
They try and make the choice for the bass.
A lot of time, that'll cost you some big fish.
Keep in mind that you want to keep covering water, but when you find an area where there's
fish, then you want to concentrate and make sure you hit every little bitty pocket because
you might have a stretch that's only 30, 40 feet long and there might be a half a dozen
or a dozen bass work in that one area, and then you might go again another 200 feet before
you contact the fish again, so hit them all.
Come here, fish.
Oh!
I'm like I've got a gator.
Oh!
What are you tangled in, fish?
Oh my gosh.
Oh!
Here we're...
Hold on.
Oh, man.
This is mama.
Now, this is the kind of stuff I was telling you about you can find in Cane.
Big fish.
And I don't care which part of the country you live in, that's a decent bass.
Hey, listen.
I sure hope that segment convinced you that bass do love fishing.
Hey, listen.
I sure hope that segment convinced you that bass do love cattails, but remember when fishing
large areas, some of it will hold fish and some won't, so always start by fishing high
percentage sections like the ones I mentioned first.
You know, in certain kinds of lakes, largemouth can be tucked up under cover that's impossible
to fish with standard tackle, but there is a way to get at them though with a method
called flipping, and on this next segment, we'll take you to a flooded mine pit to demonstrate
the flipping technique and how and why it's so darned effective and how you can use it
on your favorite fishing hole.
Hey, babe, you got everything now?
Yeah, I think so.
What in the world are them long rods you got in your hand?
Well, they're actually kind of a glorified cane pole, but now they're not really.
These are flipping sticks.
They're special rods that work with a special technique, and in this timber, we're off will.
Looks pretty good to me.
Did you get your life jackets?
Yeah, they're in the storage box here.
I always keep them right.
I got, well, there's another one here.
There's two or three of them I always keep in here.
Boy, there are a lot of trees on this lake.
Mm-hmm.
That's a little strip mine in it.
I would say it's pretty darn typical of strip mines to win all across the country.
There's lots of them all over.
They're just little puddles tucked in here and tucked in there.
They just mine them out and eventually hit water and the water floods this thing?
I honestly don't know how that works.
I'm sure that they hit water sometimes ahead of time, and then they run pumps to pump the
water out while they continue mining, but, you know, there's all different kinds of pits.
Some have timber, some don't.
This is what happens to them.
Looks like some tough stuff to fish here.
Can't get too long to cast.
We aren't going to be doing any casting at all, if you can believe that.
We might.
I've got a couple other rods for spinner baits and different things, too, depending upon what
the bass are doing.
Most of the time right up inside of this timber, on a bright day like you've got today, those
bass will hold real tight to the stumps and to the brushy cover, and that's where this
flipping method comes in because you can put a bait right in the middle of that stuff without
spooking the fish.
It's kind of different.
I think you'll enjoy it.
It takes a little while, let me also tell you, to get used to what y'all do with it.
All I see here is trees, trees, and more trees.
Where do you start?
Well, there's a lot of different things under the water.
You can see right here, for example, this is the edge of the trees.
There's a deep water break-off here, dropping into 30, 40 feet, and there's some moss patches
on the outside edges of it.
But these deep trees right on the edge are a good contact point for those bass when they
come up into the shallows to feed.
And a lot of times, on a bright day like this, you'll get your little bank runners to be
up in that shallow stuff, but your deeper trees like these right in here in the bushes
of it, that's where the big bass will hold.
Now, not always, you know, but I think there'll probably be some.
You got a pinpoint of lure pretty good to get it right inside something like that.
Absolutely, that's where the flipping thing comes in.
You see what we got here?
This is called a Lindylex.
It's a little weedless jig, it's got a, see that guard?
Yeah.
OK.
See the way it sticks up so high?
What was that, a fish?
It sounded like one right over there.
Right over there.
So see, it sticks up this high, and it protects the hook, so I can take it, like so, and throw
it right into timber.
You cast that thing?
No.
But you see?
I'm working it right through the brush tops because of that weed guard on there.
Catching bass in flooded timber is really a matter of getting your bait down through
the jungle of sticks and limbs.
With conventional bass tackle, that's nearly impossible.
But with a hefty flippin' stick and a three-eighths ounce flippin' jig, you can easily work it
through the trees.
If the jig hangs up, just jiggle it, then keep working it down until it falls to the
bottom where most big bass hide.
Right here is the edge.
This looks like a fishy little spot over here.
Yeah.
Oh boy, I got too much line out.
I think I'm wrapped in a tree here.
Pardon?
I think there's a fish on here, but I'm wrapped in a tree.
I'm gonna relax him a little bit, see if he'll swim out of there.
Is it?
Yeah, there's a fish on there.
There is?
Yeah.
There he comes.
He's around that tree, but just worse on him with that rod, you can ... He said not for
unknown parts.
He decided he didn't like that tree anymore.
Come back here, baby.
Just scoop him.
Or just ...
Come back here.
Well, I could've netted it.
I'm not used to netting them, I guess.
Sorry about that.
Oh boy.
If there's any water in the life while you're ...
Good fish.
Yeah, it looks like a nice fish.
You didn't seem to have too much of a problem reeling with that left-handed reel to me.
It feels a little awkward.
Where'd he come from?
Right over there, huh?
Right over in that little tree over there.
You're just not gonna give up on that spot, are you?
Oh.
Ah, you got a tree.
No, I don't.
Oh, hey.
That's a pretty good little bass there.
See, these things are just like cane poles.
Don't horse them, babe.
Don't horse them.
Hold still here.
I'll see if there's another one in there.
That looked too good.
I must've casted to that tree six times.
I don't believe it.
I thought you had the bark wore off that thing by now.
That's what I thought.
Good job.
Yeah, good job.
There you go.
I got you, buddy.
You got me.
I thought you had the bark wore off that thing by now.
I'll never forget the first time that I was exposed to flipping for fishing a tournament
down in Bull Shoals, Arkansas, oh, in the early 70s.
And, I mean, you talk about cold fronts, Duane.
We had six inches of snow during this tournament, during a fly rod tournament.
Back those days, they had a fly rod tournament on Saturday, and a regular tournament was
the next week, so you got about seven days of fishing, including the fly rod tournament.
Anyway, fishing got tough, to say the least.
There was, I don't know how many boats swamped out in the tournament, including our boat.
We never made it in one day.
Big waves and everything else.
A guy by the name of Dee Thomas from California made everybody else in that tournament look
like they're fishing a different lake.
Dee weighed in about 36 pounds.
And if I recall, I think Tommy Martin was second, and Tommy had about half his weight.
I mean, nobody was catching anything, and this Dee Thomas just cleaned him.
And when we got, you know, the last day of the tournament, he explained he was doing
a technique called flipping, and he went out on the lawn that night and showed a whole
bunch of us how he was doing it, and he had this special long eight-foot rod and so forth.
And he was dabbling back in sawdust slab piles.
There were sawdust and wood slabs, you know, where they're cutting logs.
And in the middle of that, he was throwing that little jig and getting bass out from
underneath it, and that's how he'd won that tournament.
Since then, this flipping thing has caught on pretty well.
Oh!
There we go.
Looks like good fish.
Yeah.
He's in that brush.
In that brush again.
Need some help today?
No, I'll be all right.
Right, you get...
Oh!
Wait a minute, I've got him over a branch here.
I see that.
I thought you were telling me about how you can horse him out of here with these things?
They say he's coming, though.
If that line holds up, I tell you what, you talk about a testimony, huh?
Oh, get out of there.
I can't get him off of that tree.
Just let him drop one time and see if he comes back up a second time.
I don't believe this.
Ouch!
That's the second time today you landed a tree with your fish.
Well, I think I kind of spooked out any other ones that might be in here as well.
That won't bother casting to that spot again.
That's a nice, scrappy bass, though.
I'm yo-yoing him up and down in this tree, and I can't get his head out of there.
Flipping is a technique that every serious bass fisherman should master.
Besides working great on bass and flooded timber,
flipping is perfect for dabbling around docks, bridge pilings, fallen trees,
and a host of other situations.
But the part I love about it most is that it allows me to get in close
and go toe-to-toe with some big old moss-back bass.
And that, my friend, is fishing at its best.
You know, there's a hot summer bass pattern that's probably right under your nose,
especially if you fish crowded lakes.
The shaded areas of boat docks and canopies provide an ideal ambush spot
for big bass right during the heat of the day.
And, of course, there are do's and don'ts, just like any pattern.
So on this next segment, we'll give you a short course on the right way to fish boat docks.
You know, bass fishermen are a funny breed.
I guess they're no different than other fishermen,
but a lot of them seem to have the habit of putting in at the axis of the north end of the lake
and running clean to the south end of the lake to find good fishing,
or the opposite of that.
And a lot of the times, they're passing by excellent spots.
One such type of situation is a pattern we want to look at in detail here today,
and that's a type of cover of what you're seeing right here, boat docks.
There are so many different types of docks, so many different types of situations,
but you talk about the ideal place for a big bass to hide in the heat of summer,
you're looking at it right here.
Boat docks also provide ideal ambush areas for bass in places where natural cover has been removed
or offer cover in an otherwise barren area.
Now, you may think that docks attract runty bass.
Many tournaments have been won by seducing a big bucket mouth out from under a boat dock.
Now, one thing, when you first come to a dock, I like to start with a spinner bait
and run it down the outside edges, particularly one with, you know,
so many different twists and turns and so much shade and cover as this one provides.
The reason is very simply, I'm looking for any real aggressive fish that I can find
and I can catch them faster and throw to them a little bit quicker, perhaps with a spinner bait.
Also, I can keep from moving in to the dock too close and spooking any bass
that might be hanging on the outside edges.
Usually, though, in the bright sun, like we've got this afternoon,
at least intermittently here, your bass are going to hold fairly tight to cover.
There we go. Oh, come on.
It's a good bass. Oh, good dock bass.
Come on.
Ah.
Well, how about if I just scoop you in?
Nice fish.
You're just sitting out there hungry as could be, weren't you?
Well, there's one, there's oftentimes others.
Although with docks, that's not always the case.
You can sometimes find whole schools of fish, half a dozen or ten fish up underneath one dock.
It depends upon the magnitude of the food shelf.
How big it is, you see if I can get it back in that same area,
and how many ambush spots and hiding spots there are.
The combination of the two is what you're looking for.
Simple, straight docks usually attract few bass, if any at all,
but docks that form T's and L's provide excellent ambush areas and thus hold more fish.
Bass are also more prone to slide under docks that extend out to deep water.
In addition, look for docks that have boat canopies and pontoons tied up alongside.
This added cover can make a good dock even better,
and knowing a great dock from a marginal one will definitely improve your catch.
Well, let's see if there's any tucked up underneath there.
It's another important thing to remember, by the way.
Don't just fish the outside edges of the dock.
In this particular case, we've got a dock real nice and low to the water,
even though it's got the wrong kind of posts.
It's low enough to water to provide some shade.
But on a day like today with bright sun, they'll tuck way back up underneath there,
and you'll take a bait like a spoon, which one I've got here with a skirt on the back of it,
that I can snap it up underneath there.
You want to try and skip it back as far up underneath that dock as you can,
because sometimes a wario...
Well, pooch that one.
Let's see if I can get one more back in here, just in case.
Then it's on to the next dock.
Let's see, those over there look pretty skinny.
I think it's time we just keep right on moving.
Usually on most lakes, there's enough docks that you can fish all day,
and by the time, if it's a small enough lake, by the time you get done with the last one,
you can start at the first one again and go back,
because the bass will move in and out quite a bit.
But you've got to keep moving, too.
Keep finding fresh docks. There's just not that many fish underneath any one,
but the combination of doing it right, that's what will produce you a lot of fish.
I mean, this one could be good. Come on, bass.
Come on.
Ooh.
Come on.
Hold still here, guy.
Come on.
Hold still.
Wow.
Good fish.
Like these little worms, huh?
A lot of times, rather than just put on a new worm,
and just bite off a little bit of it after it gets destroyed like so,
with dock fishing, sometimes I like a little bit of a bait, just like I've got here.
Boy, he was way back underneath.
There's another one under there.
If that bass was big enough, though, I think he'd be king of the dock.
And I never like to leave a dock
without giving them a couple of cracks at something different.
When I'm fishing docks, I like to keep three or four different rods rigged up
for different situations.
This particular rod here, for example, it's about five foot, three inch long.
It's a boron with a quick tip, yet it's got a stout action.
I can skip a bait back up underneath the docks.
That's also my favorite little weapon.
I've got a tiny eighth ounce jighead on here, and a piece of plastic worm,
about four or five inch piece, something like that.
But not all days is that what they prefer.
This is a medium action bait casting rod.
So, again, the boron graphite combination, it's about a five and a half foot.
It's got a fairly light tip.
And on this one, I've got a silver minnow, weedless spoon,
and I've just attached a skirt off of a spinnerbait right to the back of it.
Some days, this is a better combination.
You throw it in, just let it flutter down right alongside of it.
The fluttering action of the spoon works quite well.
On the other hand, standard single spin spinnerbait like this can be dynamite,
particularly if the bass are really aggressive
and they're out on the outside edges of the dock.
You can cover the water quite a bit quicker with a spinnerbait like so.
Again, here, I've got a standard bait casting rod,
a little bit stiffer rod in this particular case,
but what you might call, I guess, about a medium heavy
and about 10 pound line, something like that.
And this tool, kind of been built for boat dock fishing.
I'm using a standard flippin' jig with a weed guard on it
and a hunk of pork frog, a flippin' frog, on the back.
It's a specialized flippin' rod and a specialized flippin' reel.
Seven and a half foot, you just let the thing out like so.
When I leave a go on my thumb, it's back engaged and I'm ready to fish.
When the bass are holding tight to cover on a day that's real clear
where they hold real tight into the spot,
sometime a flippin' rod and throwin' it three, four, five times
right back in front of his nose is gonna be the key.
The point is this.
All of these things are equipment, utilized right,
they're gonna help you catch more fish.
Oh!
He's around that pole.
Come on out of there.
Oh, come on.
Oh, boy, this little light rod.
Come on, guy.
Oh, get out from underneath there.
Whoo-hoo!
Oh!
Come here, big fella.
Now, this...
is what boat dock bass fishing is all about.
You know, whether you consider yourself a pretty good outdoorsman
or if you'd like to become one,
there's one tip that can help you reach your hunting and fishing goals
better than any other I know of.
One, study it. Yeah, that's right.
Get your hands on videos like these, read books, magazine articles,
attend educational seminars at local sporting goods stores and sports shows,
and of course, don't forget to watch my Good Fishing
and Outdoor Secrets television series.
You know, as you learn more and catch more fish and bring home more game,
please keep your responsibility to the great outdoors foremost in your mind.
Don't necessarily kill your limit
because limiting your kill may be the better option.
Treat nature and all its resources with the respect they deserve.
After all, preserving them for future generations is totally up to us.
Hey, and until next time, good fishing and good hunting.
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