Find What They Want
Given his druthers, Alabama bass pro Kyle Mabrey likes to have a flippin’ stick in his hand. He enjoys fishing close, with a sturdy stick and stout line, and wrestling bass out of thick vegetation like hydrilla and milfoil, which mats up on the surface from mid spring through the end of fall.
Unlike many bass pros, Mabrey does not do all his flippin’ with one or two favorite baits. Instead, he flips a variety of offerings, including YUM Dingers, Vibra King Tubes, Mega Tubes, Wooly Hawgtails, Wooly HawgCraws, Wooly Bugs and BOOYAH BOO Jigs dressed with YUM Chunks.
Mabrey’s arsenal provides the gamut of profiles, sizes and actions. Each bait has unique appeals. For example, YUM Dingers punch through virtually any kind of cover and drop quickly in the water column, while Wooly Hawgtails create a tremendous amount of action even with a slow controlled fall. Vibra King Tubes offer a big profile for large aggressive bass, while Wooly HawgCraws, Wooly Bugs and Boo Jigs imitate crawfish effectively.
Numerous factors, including grass type, moon stage, forage base,
bass size and water color and temperature, help Mabrey determine
which bait to begin flippin’ into the grass. However, he believes
strongly in allowing the bass to dictate what they want.
Mabrey commonly will have several flippin’ sticks rigged on his front deck. He will mix up the offerings as he works in order to test the fish’s preferences and will make adjustments as the fish reveal preferences.
Beyond varying styles of baits, Mabrey will experiment with colors and the weighting of his baits. Often, anglers change baits when they need to change weights, he believes. The bass might just want a slightly faster or slower fall rate, depending on their aggressiveness and where they are holding in the water column.
Mabry always weights his flippin’ rigs with Excalibur Tg Tungsten Bullet Weights, having found the Tg Weights to penetrate grass much more effectively than lead weights because of their smaller size and slicker sides. For thick grass, he’ll typically use between ½ ounce and 1 ounce.
Adding one more variable to the mix, Mabrey experiments with presentations. If fish are aggressive and seem to be striking as a reaction, he might drop a bait straight down, hop it once and pull it out to flip again. Other days, he’ll leave a bait in each spot for a couple minutes, jigging it up and down repeatedly in hopes of coaxing the fish into striking.
Other variations that trigger strikes some days include dropping baits slowly with the line tight, pulling the bait up to the bottom of the mat and then dropping it again, and jerking the bait very aggressively off the bottom.
The key to success with a big blend of flippin’ lures and presentations is paying attention to EVERY detail EVERY time a fish strikes and then finding the common denominators in order to discern the winning combination.
