Hackney’s Florida Strain Cold Front Flipping Plan
If you’re like me, every year you try to escape the northern cold with a trip to someplace like Florida, Louisiana or Texas to flip for big Florida strain largemouths. And if you’re really like me, every time you make the trip you’re likely confronted with a massive cold front. That puts those fish in a funk, and forces angler to go deeper into the thickest cover with a big weight and creature bait or craw. Flipping for bass in a neutral or negative mood is a very different exercise than when they’re really chewing.
Greg Hackney, the 2014 Bassmaster Elite Series Angler of the Year, and four-time B.A.S.S. winner, loves to punch heavy vegetation and has an exemplary track record with big southern bass. His flipping system depends on a particular set of tackle, a Zen-like devotion to the craft, and certain tricks that he’s developed over decades with the big rod on the deck.
Let’s start with his preferred tackle:
65 pound test
3/0, 4/0 and 5/0
Weighty Matters
When chasing southern bass afflicted by cold fronts, Hackney will typically use “the lightest weight he can get away with.” That’s different than during the summertime, or any time the fish are otherwise very active. At this time of year he doesn’t mind having to work the bait to get it through the canopy because he’s not trying to get a reaction strike.
“If you bang them on the head with it in cold water, they’ll leave,” he explained. If push comes to shove, he doesn’t mind lowering it down in this scenario versus allowing the weight/bait combo to free fall.
He uses a black weight 95% of the time, both because he thinks it looks natural with a wide variety of lure colors, and also because it’s “best to keep fishing as simple as possible.”
The Rodent and the Punch Bug
When it’s cold, and fish are disinclined to bite, he wants soft plastics without huge appendages that create a lot of action.
“I’m a big jig guy, but that Rodent and Baby Rodent are hard to beat,” he said. “I go to the Baby when I feel like I need to get into places with a smaller weight. If I have to use the big weight, I’ll go with the Punch Bug. I’ve caught more 10-pounders on the Rodent than any other bite I’ve ever fished, including 10-pounders in tournaments.”
Bait Colors for Southern Bruisers
There’s nothing wrong with keeping it simple when it comes to punching baits, and Hackney admitted that the uber-popular black and blue, black with blue flake or black neon, but his slightly more expansive matrix involves matching the lure to the water color: “Dark in dark water, green in green water and brown in brown water.”
From a mental perspective, he gains confidence by throwing something that he believes others are not, and in the black or tannic water of his home fisheries in Louisiana, or when he goes to Florida, that often means Strike King’s California Craw.
“It’s a combination of Black Neon and Watermelon Red, which are two of my best colors and it helps me feel like I am throwing something different than anyone else.”
Tips for Making the Big Stick Work
Hackney said that the biggest mistake most anglers make when confronted with major winter cold fronts on southern big fish factories is that they don’t keep the flipping stick in their hand long enough.
“You have to go and go and go until you find them,” he explained. “When they’re in that stuff, you have to fish it, but it can be feast or famine for a long period of time.”
He stressed that the location of the best quality groups of fish is never random.
“It could be the type of vegetation, or a mix of vegetation or the depth or the bottom composition. It won’t be the same every day, either. It could change when one vegetation gets blown in in on another, but there’s typically a pattern that you can follow.”
Finally, in this scenario, once he’s fund a mat that he’s convinced holds fish, he’ll divide it into a grid and pick it apart meticulously.
“Their strike zone is not very large and they’re not actively moving around under the mat. If he’s relating to the edge, you know which way he’s probably facing, but if he’s in the middle, you often have to put it in front of his nose to get him to bite. Being thorough gives him a chance to see it.”
