Every lake or river I go to, when I get there, I like to try to find the heaviest cover it has to offer. Why? That's where the big bass live. And what techniques work the best to get them out of that cover, is techniques where you're using a big old rod and reel where you've got the leverage. Those techniques are flipping and pitching.
Let me show you the pitching technique. All you're doing is getting lower, about even with the reel, and grab the back of your bait, and just an underhand swing of the rod, and that propels the bait out there. Keeps it low to the water, where you can skip it up underneath boat docks, or you skip it underneath a willow trees. You can get it to those hard to get places where you can't cast to. Makes it a great, great technique.
I like it best when the water's a little bit clearer, where I don't have to worry about scaring them by getting too close to flip. Isolated targets, like stumps, boat docks, things like that, I have a tendency to do more of the pitching than the actual flipping. And it's just like the flip. When it hits the water, you let it go straight to the bottom on a slack line. Hits bottom, feel for the bite. If there's nothing there, jig it up and down a couple times. Go ahead and reel it in.
After you've done it a while, you don't even need to grab the bait. You know how much line to reel in. You just send it to the next target. Very, very efficient way to fish.
Obviously, the more upward swing you put on the rod, the more distance you're going to get. So when you're practicing, practice at different targets, and that'll teach you how much force you've got to put to reach that target. What you really want the bait to do is kind of run out of gas at that destination, right where that fish's home is, so to speak, so you don't have to stop it with your thumb and jerk it back into the water. That makes an unnatural presentation.
The more you practice your pitching, the more accurate you're going to be, the better your presentations are going to be, and I promise you, you're going to start catching bigger fish.
