Today in Flipjacking Walker Cline Style we’re going to talk about the technique “Flipjacking,” also known as tulle dipping, jigger-poling, dappling, and a host of other terms. We’ll look at it from an historical point of view through the eyes of famed writer Erwin Bauer and his 1956 article of the same name. While we’re at it, we’ll also clear up some misconceptions of the contemporary technique too.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure to visit with Bass Fishing Archives contributor Bill Sonnett at his home. I’ve already written about the fishing part of the visit but there was a lot more than just fishing. As stated previously, Bill’s home is a museum of fishing tackle, books and magazines. Being there was like stepping back in time and having an angler of the period there to explain everything to me.
November 1956 Outdoor Life Magazine
Almost as soon as I walked in the door, Bill wanted to show me the November 1956 issue of Outdoor Life. In the pages of this issue was an article that Bill had remembered reading as a teenager when it came out. As mentioned above, the article was written by Erwin A. Bauer, and was about a specific cane-pole fishing technique.
Over the years Bill and I have had a fun argument about the advent of “Flipping,” he believing that it is a centuries-old technique, and me taking the other side of the argument. This article was going to be his proof that it wasn’t a technique developed in the early 1970s. I couldn’t wait to read it. I’ve posted the article in its full below.
The subject in Bauer’s article was an 80-year-old man by the name of Walker Cline from Huntsville, Ohio. He describes Cline as having fished the cane pole for 66
years, which means he started around 1890. Every morning before the sun rose, Cline would go to his barber shop, grab his cane pole and head down to Indian Lake to fish before opening his shop at 8 am.
Flipjacking
His technique involved an 18-foot cane pole, heavy line as long as the pole, and a homemade groundhog-fur-laced spinner tied at the end. Cline would skull his rowboat around various parts of the lake he’d been fishing for most of his life, dropping the spinner besides tree stumps and lilies.
Bauer witnessed Cline snatch several good bass before he could even think. It opened his eyes to a technique he later said had been falling out of favor for some time. My take on that statement was most likely due to the fact that baitcasting gear had technologically advanced to the point where it was easier to cast and was cheaper than ever along with the reintroduction of the spinning reel after the end of World War II.
What Came First
Mention flipping in a room full of anglers and you’ll get several different reactions. The one I hear most from oldtimers, though, is, “it’s a technique that’s been around since the dawn of fishing and was not invented by Dee Thomas.”
I used to argue that statement was not true, mainly to irritate people. Having simmered a tad in my older years, I’ve taken a different tack, one which gives credit where credit is due on both sides of that spectrum.
Over the years I interviewed Dee Thomas several times. He’s told me countless times how he invented flipping to overcome regulations imposed against him and his fishing partner, Frank Hauck, in the early days of western tournament angling.
So, is there a difference between the techniques? Let’s take a deeper dive and see what we find.
Cline’s Method – Flipjacking
Whatever you want to call it, using a long cane pole has been around since anglers figured out they need to be stealthy while hunting fish. The rod length provides distance and at the same time power to remove a big fish from the thick cover they frequently inhabit.
Reading Bauer’s article, he touched on some of the baits used over the years tulle dipping. Pork frogs, live frogs, spinners, and even baby bottle nipples. If you could tie it on the end of the line, I’m sure some angler tried it.
The technique involved using a heavy line or cord attached to the end of the rod, or, in some cases where bamboo was used, line strung through the length of the pole and out the tip. The line could be a short, 12-inch section for use in the skittering technique, or sometimes as long as the rod itself.
In skittering, the lure is generally slapped on or just below the surface and worked along the weedlines or other shoreline cover. The short line gives good control over the bait and an instant tight line to the fish when they eat.
In the other forms, where the long line is used, the angler is generally fishing deeper haunts that are further away from the boat than the length of the rod.
In Bauer’s article, he keenly describes Cline fishing offshore stumps, using the rod to pendulum his bait toward the submerged cover. Cline would then work his lure around the stump from the surface to the bottom, the same way an angler today would.
Another thing I picked up from reading Bauer’s article was when he called it “flipping.” Here is the exact wording he used.
“Walker usually fishes alone these days because there aren’t many people left who can take the rugged business of flipping.”
“Flipping.”
This is the first documented time I have seen the term used to describe this type of technique.
Now, let’s look at the history of Dee’s technique.
Flipping
As stated earlier in this post, I mentioned I’d interviewed Dee several times about his version of Flipping and how he came to it. Dee told me several times that he was originally a tulle dipper. From 1964 through 1974, Thomas’ name was constantly in the northern California fish reports – those reports listing him a Tule Dipper Dee Thomas.
So, Dee was never ashamed of the moniker, nor did he ever state that his form of fishing was not derived from a long cane pole. To the contrary, he readily talked about how he went from the cane pole to the shorter rod.
For those who don’t know the story, I’ll provide the condensed version here. For those who want to read the whole story, I place some links to the posts we’ve published here in the past.
The Evolution of Dee’s Flipping Technique
In 1974 Dee’s fishing partner Frank Hauck convinced Dee to fish a Western Bass tournament on Lake Don Pedro in California’s Mother Load region. Thomas knew the new “tournament” anglers didn’t like Dee’s technique, calling it, “a meat fisherman’s technique,” and unsporting.
After looking at the rules and seeing all that was required tackle-wise was the rod had to have a reel affixed to it, Thomas clamped on a reel to his Lew’s Hawger cane pole, taped a few guides on it and he and Frank proceeded to enter the event.
The first tournament didn’t pan out as planned. The second event on Lake San Antonio, he and Hauck won. From there on out, the tournament anglers hounded the tournament director about the length of Thomas and Hauck’s rods. Western Bass had to do something.
Western Bass tournament director, Wayne Cummings, called Thomas up and asked him how short his rod had to be for him to be able to fish. Thomas told Cummings he’d been messing around with a 7 1/2-foot rod and that seemed adequate. Cummings then placed the 7 1/2-foot limit in all Western Bass events. The other anglers could no longer complain.
From a 16-foot rod to a 7 1/2-foot rod with a reel, Thomas quickly found out he was no longer restricted to his line length. He also found out that by using his left hand to strip and guide the line, he had more accuracy in lure placement and could reach targets as if using the long pole. If he needed to let the lure sink, he had the reel there to let out more line.
Another aspect of the short rod was he could keep the rod in a better position to set the hook at all times of the retrieve.
But the main thing that differentiates Thomas’ form of flipping from the long rod is lure control from the moment to bait hits the water all the way back to the boat. You can’t do that with a 12- to 18-foot rod and be in any position to set the hook if a fish eats you close to the boat.
This gave Dee the ability to work not just the cover he originally flipped to but any other cover or structure between him and the shoreline.
In Dave Myers’ words, “Dee found that by using the short flip, he could fish the visible targets along with any other unseen targets between the bank and the boat and his lure was always in the strike zone. He could completely pick apart a shoreline in less than half the time it would take an angler fishing by conventional casting methods. There was no wasted portion of his cast.
“Not only that, he was always in position to have total control over a fish should it strike. The anglers that complained about his long rod, that eventually led to him to fish a shorter rod, helped in the development of the concept and technique.”
Conclusion
Yes, flipping, tulle dipping, skittering, dabbling, whatever you want to call it, has been around for millennia. In fact, in some areas, it’s still a practiced technique for catching bass as seen in the recent YouTube video from Frog Martin.
Still, I argue that Thomas’ technique, although derived from the old long pole technique, differs greatly. I will concede that although Thomas may have coined the term Flipping on his own, Bauer seems to have used it first.
As a final note, Thomas told me he started tulle dipping in California in 1956 and that he was the first person to start doing it in the state. Seems coincidental that this article came out in 1956. I wonder if Thomas read the article, took the information and ran with it. I’ll leave that for you all to ponder.
For those who are interested in reading the entire story on Dee Thomas’ Flippin technique, please follow the links below.
New Western Technique, Controlled Structure Fishing, Sure to Sweep the Country
Flippin’: A Concept. Not Just a Technique – Part One
Flippin’: A Concept. Not Just a Technique – Part Two
Flippin’: A Concept. Not Just a Technique – Part Three
When my mother subscribed to Outdoor Life for me, the first issue I received in the mail was this issue. Excitement was over the top when I turned to this article, as the scenes were very familiar. My grandfather’s cottage was nearby. I recall seeing others working the shoreline in this fashion, with one person rowing and the other working the long canepole. Most did not have a spinner on the end but rather a “soft craw” wired to a hook. I have no idea where one could find an 18 ft cane pole these days. Cars regularly appeared near his cottage with long poles tied to the outside of cars. It convinced me that there were big bass in Indian Lake. At age 12, I had been unsuccessful in catching one — LOL
Bill – so I assume those long 18′ poles were one-piece affairs. If so, then yes, where in the world would you get an 18′ single piece cane pole, then or now? Were they home-made, or produced and marketed by a specific company? I would think that a two-piece rod would be practical, but even then, that would be two 9′ long sections. That’s mighty interesting. That’s something I’d be curious about learning. I think I need to persuade old catalogs from the era to see what I can find. And how do you play and land a really big bass on a rig like that? This is a topic that deserves a closer look.
David, check out the Lew’s catalog we have on here. They have cane poles in there up to 24′ long. https://bass-archives.com/lew-childre-1971/
Wow, judging by the photo, that one you got is in spectacular condition and for only $15! I checked eBay and they are CONSIDERABLY more now, and in not nearly as good condition as yours. So glad you shared that catalog, because that’s a great piece of history. I’d like to continue to research and find out who sold long cane poles in the early part of the century and how they sourced them. That seems like such an important chapter in fishing history that deserves some attention. It is cool that cane poles, fashioned from both composite material and natural cane, are still being sold in stores like Fleet Farm. I always pause when I walk by those racks, just out of curiosity and nostalgia. In fact, I purchased one (a traditional cane pole) a few years back…it’s still in its wrapper. There must be a market for them still, although I’ve never seen anyone holding a cane pole on any body of water I’ve fished.
David, you’d be surprised how many you see down here in the south fishing with cane poles. It’s nit every day but frequent enough that they still sell them in a lot of the stores. Lew Childre got his start selling Japanese cane poles in the US in the 1950s. That’s how he got to know the Japanese companies like Olympic, Fuji, and Shimano.
In a different discussion, you also mentioned the lit poles the commercial tuna fleet used back in the days before nets. Those were all Tonkin Cane from China but were seasoned in Japan. Back when I still lived in CA, I knew some old commercial fishermen who fished those boats and still had those rods. Talk about a hard job. One guy could lift a fish up to 50 pounds into the boat but as soon as they got 100 pounds, they’d string two rods together and if the fish got towards 200 pounds, three or four rods would get strung together. You really need to watch this movie my buddy Michael Fowlkes put together back in 1987. A Tribute to Tuna and the Men who Fished them from the Racks.” Michael is the guy I worked with on “The History of Sportfishing” documentary advertised on the homepage. Here’s the link to the video: https://youtu.be/Pn5pqEc85-I?si=oYAVfzgbXOETFvrO
When I was a kid, many small town hardwares and every bait shop had a bundle of bamboo cane poles standing upright outside the front door. Never saw a jointed one till years later. Bamboo grows VERY fast! A friend planted some not far from here, and it darn near took over his property. The local men’s garden club has a rule that each member needs to bring a plant for discussion. He brought a 27 “footer” one evening. I hauled away several bundles of 9-footers for kids to fish with. He had a heck of a time eradicating it.