Entry 142-1

Randy Dearman's Five Favorite Fishing Tactics

My Four Most-Favorite Techniques - Flipping

Randy DearmanEditor's Note: In 1983, Randy Dearman of Onalaska, Texas, started fishing the BASS circuit and also became a Strike King Pro. According to Dearman, "Strike King was my first sponsor, and I plan to stay with Strike King as long as I'm a professional fisherman. Strike King has always had great products, and over the years, the company has allowed me to help develop products for them. They consistently come up with new products, and I feel fortunate to be able to work with a company like Strike King."

Dearman: If I have to fish my five favorite bass-fishing techniques that I feel I always catch bass on, the first four will be flipping. Just kidding, but the reason I'm so strong on flipping is because flipping produces a better grade of bass than any other technique I've found. In the early years of tournament bass fishing, we were fishing for a 10-bass limit. So catching numbers of bass was important. Now almost all bass-fishing circuits have a five-bass limit, which means you have to catch five really-big bass to win. Year-in and year-out I've seen on the tournament circuit that the biggest bags of bass are caught on flipping more often than any other fishing method.

Randy DearmanOne of the big advantages of flipping is you can flip a wide variety of baits. I flip everything from Strike King's Pro Model jig to Strike King's tube baits. The way I determine what to flip is I'll flip enough Strike King lures until I can get a bass to bite. There's no written rule that says you have to flip a jig in December - February. Bass will bite jigs at any time of the year. There's also no rule that says that from March - October, you need to flip tube baits. Bass will bite tubes all year long.

My favorite jig color is Strike King's Texas Craw, a combination of colors, including black, brown and chartreuse. My favorite Strike King tube color is green pumpkin. I like to fish big tubes - the 4-1/2-inch size. I Texas-rig my tubes and skin-hook them on the side to make them weedless, depending on how thick the cover is.

Randy DearmanWhen I'm flipping, I'm using 60-pound-test braided line. Now I know that seems like an awful-heavy line, and you may think the bass can see it. However, remember that the bass will react to flipping baits as soon as they see them. They either will attack them or they won't. So, I haven't found that the heavy braided line has any detrimental effect at all on my flipping baits, regardless of water color. Since I've got to catch big bass in tournaments, I'll usually start with big-fish tactics and baits. For me, that's flipping.




 

© 1996-2008 Strike King Lure Company