Playing Cleanup

Being a co-angler I've learned I really need to be versatile in any situation. Fortunately for me I've been lucky enough to be paired with a boater who also cares about my success, but for some reason I have a strong feeling that this season I'll be paired with someone who is going to flip docks all day. Taking advantage of the warm 65 degree channel waters versus the cold 44 degree lake, my brother and I flipped docks all day. I focused on three key things. Bait selection, being stealth and angles. For bait selection I made sure to use something different than my brother. Jason used a green pumpkin finesse jig and being that the channel waters were stained I decided to work with a black and blue flipping jig trailed with a black craw. I learned that it is absolutely crucial to be as quiet or like I said before as "stealth" as possible. First five minutes of trolling through the channel, Jason already hooked up three times. Like usual whenever my brother catches them and I don't I start to get frustrated, but then I stopped and watched. Quickly I realized that I was coming in like a bat outta hell, splashing my ½ oz jig and smacking the side of pontoons making a ruckus . As soon as I figured out to tone it down, I started hooking up, but only mediocre bass. For me mediocre is not going to cut it. When I'm having a tough time on the water there is one thing I always do. I watch my boater! So again, I watched my brother. I watched where he flipped his jig. He flipped, reeled in and kept trolling. Then came my turn to pick apart the same spot. I made sure to hit that dock at a different angle. Jason was typically perpendicular with the spot when he was flipping and I would always be at an angle, this allowed me to flip up and under that dock even further giving that bass a better look at my jig. When I paired these three tactics together I was successful. Yes, Jason caught more than me but I still managed to adjust a few small things and pull a 4lber out of hiding and in tournament world a 4lber could be a game changer!