The Handbook of Flappin' Hogs, cont.
Early morning flipping bite. Early in the morning, bigger bass can often be found up shallow on top of weedy brush points and brush-lined rocky reefs. Flipping jigs with heavy gear (Yamamoto's heavy action rod model #SM3601HF with 16 pound test gray Sugoi fluorocarbon line) is often preferred to battle bass in thick, shallow cover. A pointy nosed jig (such as in photo above) comes through weedy brush better than other jig shapes. The flipping jig bite can often deteriorate after the early morning hours. As the sun rises in the eastern sky, bigger bass often move to deeper water - or bury deeper into inaccessible sections of cover. Depending on season, and for sake of illustration only, let's say the early
morning flipping bite has maximum potential between first light through 8 o'clock. This is the "time box" when you may do best flipping jigs shallow. Time-boxing is a way of segmenting a fishing day into short sessions and fishing each "time box" separately.
On two consecutive casts, two decent bass each pulled a flapper off this flipping jig in shallow weedy brush, then engulfed it entirely on the second hit. The same flipping jig head and skirt lasted all weekend. However, the Flappin' Hogs were torn to pieces one after one (more on that later) and a good number of Flappin' Hog's were used. The way this translates is that the more Flappin' Hogs that get torn up, the more bass you'll have caught.
Mid-morning deepwater jig bite. As the early flipping bite fizzles to an end, the deepwater jig bite turns on and often peaks during mid-morning hours. Getting back to our "time boxing" segments, depending on season, and for sake of illustration only, let's say the mid-morning deepwater jig bite has maximum potential from 9 through 11 o'clock. This would be your second fishing segment of the day. This is the "time box" when you may do best concentrating on a deepwater jig bite. Whereas a heavy flipping rod proved ideal for flipping in heavy cover, deepwater jigging with a little lighter line and 3/8-1/2 oz jigs can be better served with Yamamoto's medium heavy rod model #SM2601MHF shown above.
The jig shown above first caught a smallmouth which ripped off the upper flapper and then came back for the rest of the jig. On the next cast, it caught a largemouth which ripped off the upper "bunny ear" first, and then came back for the rest of the jig. The Flappin' Hog trailer was gladly replaced with a fresh one after it caught two bass on two casts. However, the same weedless jig head and the same skirt were used an entire weekend with 14 pound test gray Sugoi fluorocarbon line on deepwater structure anywhere from 10 to 30 feet deep, including rocky points, shelves, ledges and gullies. Deepwater bass were mainly 1 to 2 pound smallmouth or largemouth, with an occasional 3-pounder. A point to be made here is that the skirts rarely get torn. Skirts really don't need to be replaced often.
Who knows what this jig concoction imitates? Bass often only need a vague impression of something alive, not detailed realism. Shown above is #176 color skirt and #214 Flappin' Hog on brown weedless Arkey jig head under water.
Aerial photo shows a series of rugged rocky brush-filled points. Early in the morning, the flipping jig bite can be on in the shallow brush itself. As the morning wears on, the better fish will often drop back over the ledges and deep sides of the points where the mid-morning deep water jig bite will peak before noon. For sake of illustration, the red and yellow x's are shown further apart than the actual difference in location as bass move from shallow cover to nearby drop-offs.
Picture above and below shows a few of the rocky brush-filled points marked by x's on the aerial photo above.
Almost 200 largemouth and smallmouth were landed on skirted jigs with Flappin' Hogs during two mornings of flipping these brush points from first light to around 8 o'clock, after which the better bass moved deeper onto the outlying ledges and drop-offs nearby. Deep water jig action peaked around 10:30 each morning. The vast majority of the 200 fish were not hooked on their first strike. Most tore one or more pieces off each attractant-soaked Flappin' Hog first. They then struck repeatedly, ripping off parts until hooked solidly.
As the clock ticks past noon, and the mid-morning deep jig bite ends, you'll need to add other different time box segments to your day - such as fishing spinnerbaits if it is windy, fishing dropshot or shakey jigs with finesse worms if it's calm, and so on. Each time box is a short session intended to focus on and maximize your odds of scoring in a particular spot at a particular time of day with a particular tactic. You're not trying to catch fish all day long, just in a short time segment and therefore, timeboxing lets you focus on the moment and fish it to the hilt.
Early afternoon jig bite. Hey! What's that swimbait doing in a Flappin' Hog story? It's just to follow through on the time box concept, because the third segment of the day switched to a different kind of deepwater jig bite, using Yamamoto's swimbait on a 1/2 oz jig head on 8 pound test spinning tackle. The best rod for this tactic is GYB's medium light rod model #SM2701ML.
The three discrete segments of the day or time boxes that were successful included:
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The early morning flipping jig bite with a 1/2 oz jig on heavy tackle in brushy shallow cover.
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The mid-morning deep jig bite with a 1/2 oz jig on medium/heavy tackle as fish moved off to deep ledges and drop-offs adjacent to the shallow brush areas.
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The early afternoon jig bite used a third kind of 1/2 oz jig on medium/light spinning gear in steep areas where bass were waiting for deep-swimming shad schools to come by. The early afternoon time box potential peaked around 2 o'clock each day, and another 25 or 30 bass a day were landed on the swimbait during this timebox.
Segmenting a day into time boxes sounds complex, but timeboxing actually reduces and simplifies choices while maximizing potential to score during short, targeted sessions.
X marks the spot! These are the kind of steeper spots targeted during the early afternoon swimbait time box. Most shad never make it past the hordes of bass that gang up waiting to eat them on these outer points marked by x's. Consequently, the inner stretches of the cove at top and the inner parts of the big lower bay hold few bass, except during the spring spawning season. There's just not much food that makes it that far back during the rest of the year.
On their way into this side cove, there isn't anywhere for bass to easily pen incoming shad until they reach the steep points on the left side. Very few shad ever make it into the very back of the left side. Although bass are up in the shallow back of the left side to spawn in spring, most bass will tend to hang off the steep points in summer where they intercept the deep shad schools. Very few shad ever make it to the right side of the cove, and relatively few bass are caught on the right side of this cove.
If you're looking for a bait that will last long, this isn't it. Fish will make fast work of a Flappin' Hog. If you're looking for a bait that has the ability to catch fish and lots of them, look no further. One of the keys to success with Yamamoto's Flappin' Hog is that especially smaller bass in the 1 to 3 pound range can easily tear off one of the eight appendages. When they get a taste, they come back for the kill, engulfing the entire jig. The eight Flappin' Hogs shown above are a small sample of the Flappin' Hogs used up on a single fishing trip. They're missing 21 body pieces. Each missing piece represents a bass that tasted the bait on the first hit, and every one came back to crush it based on that first taste. This is one of the true keys to Flappin' Hog success - the expendable taste-test pieces let a bass determine that yes, this seems like food, it's a critter the bass has just injured, and therefore good to eat, injured and easy to capture.
It really doesn't matter to the next bass whether a few parts have been pulled off already. The Flappin' Hog has 8 expendable pieces. It's like a piscatorial pizza pie with 8 slices. They'll all be pulled apart and eaten one by one.
Color #221 skirt and #330 Flappin' Hog swimming under water. (Same jig shown dry in next photo.)
Color #221 skirts match swell with color #330 Flappin' Hogs. It's hard to gauge hook thickness from a photo, but both these hooks are heavy duty. It requires a stout line and a stout stick like Yamamoto's heavy action model #SM3601HF rod to set such heavy hooks.
This heavy jig is designed for deep water. Since the hook is heavy wire, a heavy rod and line are required in order to set it. With a lighter rod or lighter line, you will not be able to set a heavy hook - or you may fight fish halfway back to the boat, and they'll just come off because the hook was never set. Color #176 skirt and color #214 Flappin' Hog make a great pair!
Also a deepwater jig, but this one has a medium wire hook (hard to gauge hook wire in photo) and more flexible fiberguard matches perfectly with a medium/heavy rod such as GYB's model #SM2601MHF and 12 to 14 pound test Sugoi fluorocarbon line. The strength of rods, reels, line and hooks must be in harmony - or balanced - to work as one cohesive outfit.
Jigs having medium wire hooks and more flexible fiberguards also work fine with stout spinning tackle like the medium action Yamamoto spinning rod model #SM3701M shown here with 20 pound braid and 12 pound test Sugoi fluorocarbon leader. Keep in mind, spinning tackle really isn't suitable for flipping jigs or for any jigs with heavy wire hooks because you really won't be able to set a heavy wire hook every time with spinning gear. Too many fish will simply not get hooked or just come undone before they're landed if you use too heavy a hook with spinning tackle. Stick to medium wire (yet still strong) hooks (like shown in photo above) with spinning gear. Half-length "finesse" silicone skirt in photo above let's Flappin' Hog take center stage as the main strike target.
I like to keep Flappin' Hogs in their original bags. This way, it is easy for me to add a pea-sized glob of MegaStrike gel or a few drops of Yamamoto's liquid fish attractant or Kick'n Bass into each fresh bag of Flappin' Hogs when first I open it. I do not add fish attractant to the skirts. Enough attractant gets on the Flappin' Hog alone - and too much attract tends to mat down a skirt and stick the strands together.
This hot time of year, the MegaStrike gel will liquefy. I do not know whether you can see the liquefied MegaStrike remaining in this half-used bag of Flappin' Hogs above. However, the attractant is in there. You don't need to put in much at all. A pea-sized glob or just a few drops. It will quickly work itself all over all the baits in a bag, anointing them all. It will give them a lifelike sheen coating which will disperse, causing a visible oily and olfactory-detectable "chum" slick in the water column and on the surface above the bait. If any baits had gotten kinked or bent while stored in the bag, the oil helps relax and unkink the baits. With heat from the sun beating down on the bags on the boat deck, it won't be long before the oils and sun's heat help restore all baits back to their originally-molded perfect shapes without kinks and bends.
Many anglers only consider an attractant for its scent properties. However, the main reasons I use attractant have nothing to do with scent, but for the following purposes:
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Most important is, put into a bag of baits, it helps unkink and straighten out any kinked or bent baits.
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It adds a glistening lifelike sheen coating, and that helps bring out the transparency, the colors and sparkle in a bait.
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It adds a visual feeding indicator - an oily slick - that rises to the surface directly above the bait. This is a visual fish attractor, and a slick on the surface is a natural signal of feeding activity that interests every bass in the area.
Those are the three most valuable reasons to me why an attractant enhances a soft bait presentation. Of course if it tastes good or stimulates strikes, that's good too.
With that being said., there's a lot of speculation whether fish attractants do or do not work for the advertised purposes of scent attraction. They do. Especially with soft baits. I first began to use fish attractants in the early eighties. Dr. Juice was the first attractant I tried, soon to be followed by Fish Formula and a host of other attractants. After 25 years of experience, I can tell you they work, especially with soft baits. Some of the best attractants today are Gary Yamamoto's own fish attractant, Kick'n Bass and MegaStrike (shown above). I like the ease of MegaStrike's gel tube because it can be applied and stored with less mess. Squeezable bottles of non-gel liquid with spout type nozzles make more mess on you, the boat, and in storage. With MegaStrike's gel tube, there is still a mess, just less. Why put up with the mess? Because soft baits with attractant catch more bass than without. Twenty-five years of fishing with and without attractant have proven this to me beyond any doubt. If you don't want the mess (on you, your boat, your lunch, your rods, reels, everything you touch, etc.), that's understandable. Also understand that if you're not using an attractant with soft baits, you are not catching all the bass you could.
Bass hit jigs different ways. Some say that bass engulf jigs in their entirety as the jig falls, and that may be true. Swimming jigs along steadily, however, many times bass will nip and tug at the tail tips to begin with, and when a jig is at rest laying on bottom, bass often grab the tip of a trailer and yank it rather than engulfing the entire jig. If a bass nips and tugs at a swimming jig or if it grabs and yanks on a resting jig, if there is no attractant or if there is no expendable part that comes off in the fish's mouth, then the chances the fish will wheel around and strike again are iffy at best. Most likely, you will not get a second strike. At least that's what my research proves. On the other hand, when an attractant-coated part of a Flappin' Hog gets sacrificed to a hungry fish, it convinces the fish it's good to eat and has just been injured. It's almost certain you'll be struck again as the fish comes back to finish the job. All you need to do at that point is get prepared to set the hook. And that's the beauty behind the Flappin' Hog coated in attractant and fished on a jig dressed with a short skirt.
Next: How To Trim a Weedless Jig