Alabama tournament fisherman Kyle Mabrey uses a broad arsenal of YUM soft-plastic offerings when he picks up a flippin’ stick.
Kyle Mabrey doesn’t limit his close-quarters fishing to one or two standby baits. When an entire field of top pros is flippin’ and pitchin’ into the same kinds of spots, Mabrey wants to find the bait, weight and presentation that will set him apart from the pack.
Two of Mabrey’s favored flippin’ baits – a YUM Mega Tube and a Booyah Boo Jig dressed with a YUM Chunk – fall in line with the most popular picks for the same application. However, his arsenal also includes a YUM Vibra King Tube, which is bigger and bulkier than the Mega Tube and has ribs, a Wooly Hawgtail and HawgCraw, and a YUM Dinger.
Mabrey’s selection any given day falls partly on “feel,” and finding the best bait commonly comes only through experimentation. However, various offerings in his line-up have specific strengths, which make them ideal starting baits for certain situations.
For example, the Vibra King Tube typically gets the nod over the Mega Tube for destinations like Lake Guntersville, where Mabrey expects to contend with big bass and knows he’ll need hawgs to compete. “More aggressive fish also like the bigger Vibra King Tube, so I’ll alternate tubes in practice to gauge the mood of the bass,” Mabrey said.
A Wooly Hawgtail comes into play when Mabrey needs a lot of weight to punch through the cover but a slow fall to draw strikes. Once the bait punches through, he’ll ease the offering down on a tight line, instead of letting it fall freely. The curled twin tails on the Hawgtail create a lot of action even with a slow, controlled fall.
Mabrey opts for a Wooly HawgCraw, a cousin of the Hawgtail that has craw-like claws instead of twin tails, during the full moon and new moon, when crawfish most often hatch.
Also because of the crawfish hatch, Mabrey fishes a lot of jigs during the full moon and new moon, especially for probing wood cover or pitching to holes in vegetation. His jig of choice, when conditions allow, is a 3/8-ounce Booyah Boo Jig, which falls slowly through the water when matched with a YUM Chunk. However, when the fish get aggressive or hold in deep brush, he might go as heavy 1 ounce.
Mabrey’s least conventional flippin’ baits, YUM Dingers, come to the forefront when grass gets heavily matted. Dingers will slide through cover that virtually no other soft-plastic offerings will penetrate.
Because of their narrow profile, Dingers also allow Mabrey to fish with reduced weight. In modestly thick cover, it takes very little weight to get a Dinger down among the bass. Once a Dinger hits bottom, he likes to lift it until it bumps the bottom of the mat and then let it fall again. “Fish often will grab it on that second drop,” he said.
Sometimes when Kyle Mabrey thinks a change is in order, all he changes is the size of his weight. “The rate a lure falls through the water column can make all the difference,” he said.