When Nothing Else Will Work, Try The Flip-N-Spin

Editor's Note: Chad Brauer of Osage Beach, Missouri, son of famed fishing pro Denny Brauer, has grown up in a fishing family. Brauer can't remember a time when he hasn't fished for bass and hardly recalls a time when he hasn't fished competitively. Brauer, a Strike King pro for the past six years, has made a name for himself on the professional bass-fishing circuit.

Question: Ok, so tell me about this Flip-N-Spin.

Answer: My dad helped design the Flip-N-Spin for Strike King. Rather than have the line tie on the head of the jig where you normally will find it, Dad developed a spinner bait arm coming off the head of the jig. He added a single Colorado blade to the spinner bait arm. Dad designed this bait to be fished in areas like the Potomac River where you would need to fish a spinner bait through heavy cover, but most spinner baits would get hung up.

He wanted to develop baits that you could flip like a jig but would fall like spinner bait. This way you could fish areas where most anglers flipped jigs, but instead you would be flipping a jig/spinner bait combination. This combination gave the fish a different-looking bait and allowed us to catch bass in high-pressure areas where most people were flipping a jig and were unsuccessful.

Question: Was there a particular time in your fishing career when using the Flip-N-Spin saved your day?

Answer: When my dad and I arrived at Beaver Lake on the F.L.W. Tour, the lake was high and flooded, and the water was up in the willow trees. We fished a creek arm that had a lot of willow trees in it. I caught three or four different bass, fishing the Strike King Pro-Model Jig through the willows. But I noticed most of my bites were coming when the jig fell down through the willow bushes.

Once I decided the bass were probably suspended in those bushes, I decided to switch to a Strike King spinner bait and started catching a few little bass on the spinner bait. Because I wasn't satisfied with the size or numbers of fish I was catching, I opened my tackle box and began to study my lures.

When I spotted the Flip-N-Spin in my box, I remembered these were the kind of conditions this bait was designed to produce. The area I was fishing was only about 50 acres. Seven or eight other boats were fishing in this area. Most of those fishermen where flipping jigs. I decided to try the Flip-N-Spin.

I pitched the Flip-N-Spin in the middle of those thick willow bushes and let it fall on a slack line down through the bush. When the bait would get 3 to 4 feet deep in the bush, I'd see my line jump violently, which was a dream bite for an angler who liked to flip. I ended up getting 30 bites on that Flip-N-Spin, and most of the bass were good solid keepers.

The first day of the tournament the area had a huge rainstorm with lots of red mud rolling through the area. I stuck with the Flip-N-Spin pattern and tried to fish wherever I could find clear water. Although I caught only one bass, the fish weighed 5 pounds, usually what a limit would weigh on Beaver Lake. Dad caught only a couple of bass on the first day. Therefore he and I both decided to commit the tournament to the area we'd fished in practice and use the Flip-N-Spin.

The Flip-N-Spin paid off for me, and I finished 20th in the tournament. Dad caught a big stringer of bass that day and finished in the top five in the tournament. We both learned that the Flip-N-Spin allowed us to fish water the other fishermen had already fished and catch bass the other fishermen couldn't take.

Question: What made the Flip-N-Spin work so well, and does color count with the Flip-N-Spin as well?

Answer: We learned that you can pitch the Flip-N-Spin in an area where you would normally flip a jig and in a region where you'd like to flip a spinner bait, but you know it would get hung up so much the bass wouldn't bite it. This bait gave the fish a different look than the jig offered and triggered strikes you wouldn't get if you were flipping the jig.

In this tournament, I was flipping the white Flip-N-Spin. Since that tournament, I've caught bass on the black-and-blue Flip-N-Spin and the chartreuse Flip-N-Spin. In clear water, I use white. If the water stains up, I'll use chartreuse and white. If the water is stained heavily, I'll use black.

Find Tips & Tactics for other Strike King Lures here!