Flipping’ this bait around the shallow reeds is one of my favorite methods to fish the Super Tube. The Super Tube is one of the few baits that allow you to skip it across the top of the water to slide back into the small openings in the reeds. These openings are natural areas for shallow Cane River bass to be hiding using a light sinker pegged to the head; the smooth streamline design of the buoyant Super Tube allows it to skip across the surface of the water. Flipping this bait in and around these type reed openings can catch you a lot of fish. As the water warms further south on the Cane, the reeds get fewer and fewer and you will find more timber and grass patches.

Using a heavy weight just let the tube punch through heavy cover, like grass, brush tops, timber and other structure, and let it fall. The tube falls straight down and doesn’t hang up easily on structure. As the bait is working down through the timber give it a shake or two to draw attraction from the fish. The irregular motion of the tube as it falls creates not only worm type bites but a lot of reaction bites from the bass as the tube bounces off of the limbs of the lay downs and brush. Sometimes there might be a clear area between timber/lay downs and the vegetation a couple of inches wide - flip the tube into that clear area and let it fall down beside the tree and you will find out that this is a very effective method to catch fish.

In cooler or dingy water sometimes I like to add a rattle to the tube, with the hollow body style of the tube it is easy to insert a tube rattle. Also the use of an attractant will help in the fall of tubes in grass. The greasy formula of most fish attractants allow the tubes already sleek body slide through the grass without hanging up. I prefer the anise spray attractant sold by V&M as it is the same as the tube is supplied with, and compliments the Cyclone Hard Head as well.

Flipping means heavy dense cover so your tackle needs to be heavy duty as well. I use a 7’6" Quantum Tour Edition PT Rod with an extra fast tip, for quick snap hook sets in the shallow water. I team this with a Jeane Tackle flipping reel, which is specifically designed for flipping and pitching. I spool this with a 80lb Power Pro line. Using a Daiichi Bleeding Bait 5/0 hook will not only give you the wide bite that you need on a tube, but will add a little extra attraction to the tube.

Chris Megee
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