Pretty good interview with Dee Thomas on Y**tube site.  Search this post's title.

 

oe

Dee is known as a West Coast angler and the father of the flipping technique.  He was the first person to adapt this technique to bass tournaments.   For many years before Dee, subsistence fisherman were using similar techniques to catch bass to survive.  Here in the South they called this fishing "Jigger Poling" or "Doodle Socking".  There were no plastic worms or craws back then.  Most pole lures were made from feathers, cloth or rope.  Popular pole fishing lures were also buzz baits or even wooden plugs.  I remember watching these guys as a kid as they rowed down the Everglades canals thrashing the water with their long poles.  One angler would troll a musky jitterbug at night.  It takes a lot of strength and endurance too keep this up for any length of time. 

 

Big bass don't move far for their food, they don't need to.   What Dee discovered was how small a bass strike zone is at times.   There are always some bass shallow.  Here in Florida, there could be a giant right under your boat at any time.  Getting that fish to bite can be a challenge, especially when pressured or after a cold front.  When bass food drops silently from above, it looks natural.  Do this enough times, and you will catch that fish.  If you want to catch the biggest bass of your lifetime here in Florida, bring your flipping stick.

 

Dee Thomas is a legend out west.  I bought his vhs, Flippin With Dee Thomas on or around 1981 and bought his signature rod by Fenwick shortly thereafter.  The rest is history.  

“Stop interrupting me”, age hasn’t soften ole Dee.

Tom

I have one of those old 7'6'fiberglass flipping rods and still use it , for carp .

@WRB Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Dee a "Tullie Dipper" not a Jigger Pole fisherman?

 

Jigger Pole & Doddle Socking ain't the same thing.

 

Dee used 12’ to 14’ fiberglass poles and tule dipped using jigs, so a tule dipper on the Delta. He won a tournament on the delta last year at 83 and still fishing.

Tom

11 hours ago, Catt said:

@WRB Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Dee a "Tullie Dipper" not a Jigger Pole fisherman?

 

Jigger Pole & Doddle Socking ain't the same thing.

 

 

There were many regional variations of the long pole technique.  Jason Lucas talked about them briefly near the last chapter of his book "Lucas on Bass Fishing".  That was in the fifties.  I first learned about flipping in the eighties when Dee Thomas won an Okeechobee Tournament.   As I remember a nasty cold front came through, which was perfect for Dee.  At first, we couldn't believe fish would stay right under our boats.  We though they moved off as we approached.  Like everyone, I tried flipping for a while without much success. It wasn't until I moved to Central Florida twenty five years ago that I discovered how deadly it can be.  Harris Chain bass are some of the most disinterested bass I have ever seen.  Except for the spring of the year, you have to hit them on the head to get a bite. 

This ain't what Dee Thomas was doing 

 

 

^^  I think I want a jiggerpole rod for Christmas .

Think about this.  You are a fisherman in the thirties during the depression.  You own a small row boat that you built yourself.  You can't afford a fishing reel or a store bought lure.  All you have is a 12 foot cane pole and three feet of linen line.  Your family needs to eat.  You make a lure out of a piece of rope, cloth or whittle one out of a hunk wood.  You take your cane pole and reach as far back in the cover as you can and work your homemade lure back in the woods. You row with one hand and work your heavy pole with the other all day or all night long.  Your arms ache, the mosquitoes are terrible, it's cold in the winter and hot in the summer.  A five pound bass engulfs your lure and you swing her into the boat.  That's how what we now call flipping was born.

Cool video Catt!