A WET BIRD FLIES BY NIGHT

by John McKean

" Mornin'! How 'bout a cup of pipin' hot coffee?" called the kindly old fella from the next campsite.

I could hardly believe anyone was up and ready before me, but gladly accepted his offer.

Turned out ole Bill had arisen WAY before me - like 11 PM the previous night! He went on to explain, in his low key, humble manner, that by only fishing in darkness, big largemouth bass went berserk for his slow motion, carefully worked topwater plugs. Then, noticing my arched brows and open mouth, sleepy-eyed Bill directed me to his large cooler.

"Tough night," he calmly stated, "we actually had to WORK for these for once!" My jaw dropped even lower as I gaped at the lid-level stack of fresh green lunkers ! It seems Bill had several partners to assist him, now sound asleep, yet after getting to know this always tired looking old master over several summers, my bet is the ole timer could have easily packed a nightly coolerful by himself anytime he wanted.

Comparing notes. it became clear that Bill and I fished almost exactly alike. Well, sort of. Vacationing on New York's St. Lawrence River each August, I placed home made bucktail jigs deep down at the base of 18' weed edges in search of northern pike, while night-owl Bill "jigged" wooden floaters through open water bay areas for bass. Our actual retrieves were remarkably similar - keeping rods pointed toward each respective lure we'd wind baitcaster handles a turn or two, then simply pause. Of course, my jigs darted forward then fluttered and dove, while his plug crawled ahead then fluttered and settled on top. Neither of us attempted to instill extra action, preferring to have baits swim as naturally as possible. And, almost always, strikes mostly came for both of us during the pauses.

As a dedicated jig fisherman for the past 50 years, then, my well honed crank and pause technique serves just fine for working my brand new BIRD after dark. Of course, ole friend Bill always comes to mind, especially with this summer's accessive heat driving me to enjoy the coolness and solitude of the 9 to 4 AM shift! As Bill confided, relatively open water areas by night see lunker bass roaming and plundering away from their usual day time hidey holes. Then, too, treble hooks of old time surface plugs essentially required wide open basins to keep hooks somewhat clean, and evening air free from constant obscenities!

Still, a bay bound surface caster is frequently over, or very near, weeds, pads, and floating debris. Our modern BIRD ,snagless as can be be over anything, makes things so much more pleasant!! After all, neither in deep water jigging nor night time surface work can we actually see the cover that we fish.

A "baker's dozen" observations of starlight BIRD workings :

1) While boating, keep well out from shoreline. The 5/8 oz aerodynamic BIRD casts a mile, and you sure don't want to chuck it into trees. Now, if you fish from shore, let 'er fly!

2)Concentrate on the BIRD's wingspan, and allow it to "swim". That is, the stop-n-go jigging motion creates a nice flapping pulse to supply a most natural touch.

3) Mostly maintain the jigging style retrieve, but don't be afraid to change up the pace. Short "pops" supply noise which sometimes is terrific.

4)When "bumps in the night" -weed clumps,pads, or sticks-are perceived, try a slow steady retrieve to climb right over them. Bass go bonkers when a lost, injured critter knocks or crashes into any structure.

5)Getting tired? Allow longer pauses after each short swim or twitch. A deadstick approach can be deadly at night. Enjoy a cup of coffee.

6)Concluding a retrieve, pause the BIRD for just an instant before lifting into the boat. You'll sometimes be very surprised to learn what was tracking it unseen below! Just last night this tactic yielded my biggest largemouth!

7)A longer "flipping stick" is often in order to acquire maximum distance. Covering water is the name of the night game.

8)BIRD hooksetting is best done as a POWER maneuver. That is, on the strike crank down hard, actually GRIND the handle, with the rod pointing toward Mr. Bass. Imagine trying to stretch his lips about a foot or more. Then invoke a total body turn, rod firmly locked on hips, and drag him a bit more. Chances are the bass will actually not be moved, but the hook sure will be secured inside his jaw!

9)Enjoy the battle, but don't play him overly long. Obstructions where a bass may head just can't be seen (by us) during pitch blackness.

10) Return on subsequent nights to swim the BIRD over areas where bulges or ripples were spotted, but no strikes occurred. This could well be the private hunting ground of a monster that holds up in impossible cover during daylight.

11)During a midnight cruise, fire the BIRD out over deep water every so often. It's a fact that many untouched lunkers lounge while suspended over extreme depths while in sunshine, but travel to shallow "supermarkets" after dark. Intercept them enroute and greet an eager feeder!

12)While daytime BIRD fishing can be heartstopping, everything is magnified by the stillness of night. Carry an extra pair of undershorts. Trust me on this!

13) Wear a life jacket and be careful out there. In the giddiness of hauling in that tenth BIRD hooked bass, it's easy to misstep!

How long do you stay at it? Well, I have a pike fishing pal who is an expert jig fisherman and often asked that very question. In his thick, native German accent he always laughingly assures, "Ya yust haf' to keep on yiggin'!" Same goes for night time surface work - keep your flyin' BIRD wet!

BIRD BANGING BULRUSHES FROM THE BASS LURES OF FLIPINTHEBIRD

Thursday, July 21, 2011

BIRD BANGING BULRUSHES

by John McKean

Ever adventurous, 26 year old Sandy, a gal-pal of son Sean, ignored my advise to NOT penetrate the bulrushes for better casting position. Had I been even slightly more specific about the 6' black snake that loved to lounge in the cool soft mud therein I wouldn't have felt quite so guilty over the horrific scream, sky high leap, and amazingly gross string of expletives from the pretty little lady! Yet,surprisingly, it wasn't a snake or snapping turtle that put Sandy into total panic but, rather, the struggling critter hanging from her lure. First cast over slop yielded a hefty, bulgy eyed bullfrog!

In fact, my initial tosses with the brand new BIRD had the frogs a-rushin' ! Unless hungry for a big platter of fried frog legs, it's best to take measures to thwart the slop hopping rascals' advances, especially considering the realism offered by this natural looking surface bait! So, over the past several years I've been developing a unique system that focuses maximum fishing time exclusively to big bass.

First of all, most good ponds reside in very fertile farm land and are surrounded with bulrushes, cattails, sedge, and similar tall,thick weeds. My approach is to remain hidden and cast right over these close knit stalks, directly into heavily vegetated water. Never a need to cast too far, yet there is a definate advantage in working a bird TOWARD the shoreline; an injured or stunned, downed real bird will struggle for its life to reach closest land or a veggie " island" rather than seek safety (?) out over depths. And from a fishing standpoint,even the gentle BIRD "splat" on landing is out away from fish holding cover and not likely to spook a wary old lunker.

After touchdown, I still wait a moment for my BIRD to quit rocking (bass seem to love this settling motion!), then give it the tiniest twitch I can muster. Unless gobbled up, I allow a brief pause, then promote a series of two or three consecutive pops. I try to keep it very subtle - any troubled critter in nature will strive with all their might to keep themselves UNnoticed on the surface! However, you can bet that every largemouth in the area WILL be paying attention!

Every twitch on the angler's part, no matter how limited, sends the BIRD's sensitive wings into a cute little breast stroke. After, any subsequent pause creates a rebound reaction of the thin living rubber flappers that seems to draw most of MY strikes! Now, when the lure approaches lily pads, thick weed masses, or just slimy "gunk", retrieve is just a bit faster to allow the BIRD's head to lift, so it'll crawl right on up for a "rest" (ALWAYS picture a hidden monster bass below, looking up with murderous intent and a huge feast in mind!). Thereafter, beware when sliding your BIRD back into a hole or any open water - this is exactly like playing with dynamite!!

Now we come to the crux of my pond/bulrush system. Usually standing at a land base slightly elevated from the lake's surface and peering a few degrees downward over the tops of the bulrushes, I see my BIRD nearing within inches of shore. To get the highly valued lure back (after allowing a final slight pause to determine if hidden holes harbor lurking bass) I give a very hard yank up and backwards (be careful of onlookers, geese, or bird biting bears from the woods!). This is sorta like a fly fisherman's backcast -if he were on steroids! My heavyhanded reverse motion gives a whole new meaning to "Flipinthebird"!! Strangely, the aerodynamic BIRD construction allows it to literally fly up over the bushes to land somewhere behind you!

Yes, I look extremely demented( friends say this is natural to me!) with my arm cranking back flip, but it's far easier to pull a BIRD back to me over grass or gravel than to continually fight the pond side base of tough bulrushes for recovery. By the way, just before the wild rip, if you spy big eyes suddenly appear, lift the lure even quicker to get it froggin' outa there!

Sometimes your " rip n fly" technique may find your BIRD temporarily hung up among thinner tiptops of stalks, but a BIRD proves as snagless out of water as well as it is in slop and can be instantly jiggled free. Also the extremely thick BIRD body makes it about the only lure rugged enough for continuous shore crashing onto tough terrain; just yesterday I heaved mine over jagged stones all morning long -it still looks good as new! You see, the bird BOUNCES, never breaks!

About now the question usually is "But how do I land bass from the wrong side of the bulrushes?!" Well, pal, you're on your own here ! But I'm sure you'll immediately become "one with the plant life"(and bullfrogs, black snakes, and snappers!!) when you realize a six or eight pound largemouth is tuggin' on your BIRD!

"The Best Top Water Hollow Bodied Bait Ever Designed"

About 10 years ago my buddy Sam calls me and tell me about a bird that came out of fish Booby Cobo caught. He said it was still alive. A couple weeks go buy and I head to Watsonville for some lake fishing and he hands me of the rats with a piece of living rubber glued to the top. I’m thinking, WTF… So he hammers them that day and I just laughed. A few years go by, he keeps on tweaking.  The baits get better and we start using them at Clear Lake and the Delta. We quickly learned browns and whites get more bites and the black/red ones would get your picture taken. 

Sam starts working with liquid plastics and various materials to make the wings; he would hold it up above his head and look at it while explaining the next variation. He kept on tweaking until the spring of 2010, when 9 years of bird talk finally came to fruition.  He and the Watsonville rat boys were catching them like never before.  My Aunt lives on Pinto Lake and so I was aware of the fish there, but not the amount of big splashes (3.5 lbs or better) they were getting.   I had to go check it out and they weren’t kidding. The (show me two rule) lasted about 10 minutes and I was tying one on was blasting them shortly. They were throwing the birds into the deepest thickest trees and tulles with a pop, pop, pause and they just waited. Fish were blasting these baits and we couldn’t believe it.

Last summer Sam flies his plane in from Watsonville and we fish the Delta and we get big splashes and catch fish in just about everywhere we went. The rat boys were catching them everywhere also. That was it. Sam started Flip in the Bird Lure Company, did his trademarks and patents. During the winter, the bird went through a few body mold designs, wings variations, hook and recess considerations, tail options, etc. He always looked at it from the bottom side. There was a time about 2 months ago, on Rev 2 when we thought we messed it up. So Sam got input from all the testers, made the necessary changes and told me in 3 weeks he have it fixed. He delivered on what he said.

A few weeks ago, Sam Brought the Rev3 Birds to the Delta to test and we tested it for 4 days on two different weekends.  We fished mornings and one evening. We had 100 deg. weather one weekend and the other was 75 deg with 10-20 MPH winds with a front moving through. A full moon figured to make things tougher. Sam was using the Purple Finch and the Red Winged Blackbird. I was using the White Chested Tree Swallow. Sam’s baits were barbless. We were very pleased with our testing totals. Sam went 10-14 on the Big Splash. We didn’t count two lbers. I managed 10 for 17 for Big Splashes. Three of the fish came back for a second pass after missing. The number we thought was interesting was, 70% of our bites came on a dead stick of 15 seconds. We had a few that sat for one minute before being blasted.  

My bait after 4 days of fishing looks like the day it was purchased.  Sam, having an Industrial Engineering Degree from SJ State, blended the right plastics to make a durable long lasting texture.  He also engineered the body angle to keep the bird from being a sinker. No sinking problems experienced.

We fish the bird many different ways. The fish will tell you which way they like it and also where they are. Meaning, some days they eat it when it hits the water or when the bird is in its zone. Some days, the fish are neutral in mood a take a little longer to commit. Dead sticking up to one minute or longer has produced some of the most vicious big slashes.  The design of the bird, keeps the bait in the zone longer (drag of wings and tail in water) and angle of bait. The underwater profile is what makes the bird different any other bait. If the fish is there, it will want it outa there.  

The bird is "The Best Top Water Hollow Bodied Bait Ever Designed"

Bob Santora

Pro-Staffer

™ Flip in the Bird Lure Company

“The Bird is the Word”