There are few techniques in the world of bass fishing that are more intimidating than punching a soft plastic bait through intensely thick vegetation. The weight has to be gargantuan. The bait has to be small. The bites are infrequent. And when you do hook a fish, it is very difficult to pull it out of the grass. Still, you can catch the biggest bass of your life if you commit to the effort. Elite Series pro Chris Lane knows this, and owes his bass fishing career to the technique. Follow his advice on narrowing down vast acres of matted green stuff to identify small concentrations of fish, and punching may well become your go-to method for catching lunker bass.
It isn’t often that a single bass defines an angler’s career, but Chris Lane clearly remembers the fish that literally kept him in the Bassmaster Elite Series. It happened on March 24, 2007, the third day of the tournament at the California Delta, the second event in Lane’s sophomore season as a pro. Unless he won a nice check, he wasn’t sure he’d continue in the sport.
That’s when the 13-pounder hit his creature bait in the Delta’s thick vegetation. Lane managed to get the fish out of the greenery and within inches of his outstretched hand before it came loose. His partner that day said it was the biggest bass he’d ever seen. After recomposing himself, Lane picked up his rod and started flipping into the heavy mat again.
This was the way he had taught himself to fish back home in Florida when he was 15 years old, and a few moments later, a 9-pounder hit. This time, Lane did land the bass. It got him into the final Top 12, where the next day he finished ninth. That gave him enough money to fill up his RV and drive to the next tournament, and to continue his career, which now, a decade later, includes seven B.A.S.S. victories, including the 2012 Bassmaster Classic title.
Although his lure presentation throughout the Delta event that week was flipping, his actual technique was one known as “punching,” in which a heavier-than-normal sinker is used to punch through extremely thick, usually matted, vegetation and pull a large soft plastic lure down with it.
“It’s high-impact, hand-to-hand combat with giant bass,” says Lane, describing what punching is all about. “It’s very close and happens right in front of you. You’re trying to penetrate a jungle where giant bass are hiding, trying to sneak into their house without them knowing you’re there. It’s intense.”
It’s also one of the most effective big-bass techniques used by the pros today; Lane searches for places he can try punching on every tournament lake he fishes. He’s punched grassy water from Champlain to Kissimmee to Guntersville to Toledo Bend to the Delta, and he likes it so much, he uses a plastic creature bait he designed specifically for punching.
“Punching is a direct outgrowth of the flipping presentation California pro Dee Thomas introduced to B.A.S.S. competition in 1975,” explains Lane, “and all of us believe the actual punching technique itself was developed right there on the Delta, where the vegetation is some of the thickest anywhere. The primary difference is that punching is strictly a presentation for matted surface vegetation. In flipping, you can fish vegetation, but you can also flip to logs, rocks, pilings — practically any type of shallow cover. You’re generally using a lighter lure, too. Dee’s favorite jig weights were between 3/8- and 5/8-ounce.
“Punching developed as its own presentation out of the need to penetrate the heavier cover that the lighter flipping lures couldn’t get through. Thus, in punching, we use a sinker weighing at least a full ounce, and occasionally as heavy as 2 ounces, to get our lure through that cover. We don’t use jigs, either, because the open hook will snag on the vegetation as it’s falling. Because the cover is so thick, we need a weedless bait the heavy sinker can pull straight down.”
Lane’s punching gear includes a 7-foot, 6-inch medium-heavy action Bass Pro Shops titanium rod and a 6.4:1 reel spooled with 65-pound-test Bass Pros Shops Hyper Braid braided line. Because he uses braid exclusively, Lane feels he can use a slightly lighter rod action and still get good hook sets and play big fish effectively.
His lure of choice is a 3-inch creature bait, the Drop Dead Craw, which he developed for Luck-E-Strike Lures. It’s available in several sizes, and its primary feature is a pair of swimbait tail appendages that add extra kick as the bait falls. In many cases, lure action is an important part of punching, since the heavy weight is pulling the lure down quickly in fairly dark water. Lane thinks a lot of strikes come as a reaction when a bass feels those vibrations right in front of him.
“Creature baits are all I use when I’m punching,” Lane explains, “because I not only want a large profile lure, but I also need it to be weedless. It absolutely has to slide through the vegetation easily and without snagging. Some anglers use plastic worms, but I don’t like them because the tail can and often does wrap around a stem or leaf and get stopped as it falls. If I’m punching through an extremely heavy mat, I’ll use a smaller 2-inch creature bait, but if it’s a little thinner and I can get my lure through it, I’ll use a larger 4-inch Craw.
“Creature baits can be rigged Texas style so they’re weedless,” he continues, “and I normally use a 3/0 or 4/0 TroKar hook. If I have one single recommendation for any angler learning to punch, it’s to use a strong hook. Not only are you fishing for big bass, you’re fishing for them in the thickest cover you can find, and you have to get them out of that cover.”
The heart of any punching system is the heavy sinker, and Lane never punches with less than a full ounce of XPS Tungsten. He was using 1 1/2 ounces during that Delta tournament, and in other places he’s punched with as much as 2 ounces. His sinker weight depends on how thick the matted vegetation is, and he pegs it snugly so it can’t slide up the line.
Some pros like to use what is known as a punching skirt — a thin-strand, jig-type skirt that attaches to the sinker and drops down over the head of the lure — but Lane is not one of them. While a skirt gives the lure a larger profile and increases overall action, he believes such skirts are better suited for regular flipping. To him, the appendages on his creature bait have been all the action he’s needed. Punching skirts are offered by a number of manufacturers, and he suggests anglers try punching both with and without them and make their own decisions.
For Lane and the other pros who use this technique along the Elite circuit — and there are a lot of them — the actual punching presentation is flipping. Lane does not even pitch, because to be most effective, the weight and lure need to travel as vertically as possible through the cover. With the wider arc that pitching creates, the weight has to break through the mat at an angle, and that’s when it gets snagged.
“You can punch through essentially any type of matted vegetation, like milfoil, hydrilla, hyacinths, eelgrass and Kissimmee grass, and they all have basic similarities,” Lane points out, “in that underneath the surface matting, the water is really semi-open. You still have root systems to deal with, but basically, the vegetation itself is much thinner.
“Bass move into these areas for different reasons, including the need for shade and protection, and to feed. Small organisms like freshwater shrimp may be attracted to the roots, and bluegill and other small fish will feed on them. Bass will feed on the bluegill, which, I believe, is one reason punching is such a successful technique. Things are pretty quiet down there, but suddenly this creature bait comes dropping through from above, and a big bass just hits it purely out of impulse.”
Lane has noticed that the majority of his strikes come either just as his lure breaks through the mat on its initial fall or after the bait reaches the bottom and he hops it up a time or two. He raises his rod to pull the lure back up to the underside of the mat, then lets it fall again. He only does this a couple of times; if he doesn’t get a hit by then, he reels in for another flip. When he does get a strike, there is seldom any question that it is a strike. Most of the time, they’re explosive.
“It only takes one or two of these strikes to tell you where the bass are and how they want the lure,” notes Lane. “Most bass will generally be doing about the same thing at the same time when they’re under the mats. That’s one of the good things about punching, in that you can pattern their behavior pretty quickly.”
Finding the bass in miles of vegetation is another matter, and Lane insists it’s not just about the vegetation. There are always other factors involved, and to him, the most important is a depth change. He’s caught bass punching in water as shallow as 1 foot and as deep as 20 feet.
“You don’t just go out and start flipping a grass mat and catch them,” he emphasizes. “Punching is not an easy technique to learn, and rarely does it produce a lot of bass throughout a day of flipping. Learning to read the grass is really important in determining where bass are most likely to be. I will also say that when you do catch a bass in a particular spot, you are very likely to catch one or two more fairly close by. They won’t necessarily be in the very same place, but just like the 13-pounder and 9-pounder that day at the Delta, they were only a short distance apart.
“Always study the bigger picture of how a line of matted vegetation looks in relation to the surroundings,” he continues. “The edge of a line of matted greenery is frequently defined by a depth change, however slight it might be. That’s why you don’t try to flip farther back into the mat, because bass tend to stay closer to that depth change. It may only be a foot, but that might be all the bass want.
“Small openings or holes in the vegetation may actually indicate a deeper hole on the bottom, and the same is true with a noticeable point or cut along that edge. The mat might also grow right up to the edge of a small ditch or channel, and you know that ditch or channel isn’t going to be perfectly straight. It’s going to have some bends and turns, and you may be able to see this along the edge of the visible mat itself, where it creates a point or an irregular edge. This is how you fish depth changes in punching.”
At the same time Lane is watching for depth changes, he’s also looking for another factor he knows can be important to bass, which is hard cover. It might not even be anchored in place, such as a log that’s been washed in; he’s caught bass hiding under floating plastic Gatorade bottles and even individual two-by-fours that have been caught in the mat.
Still another factor Lane considers is water color. Naturally, clearer conditions are always better than dingy or muddy water. One thing Lane does pay attention to, however, is that thick, matted vegetation may form a type of barrier to mud and silt being washed down a lake, in which case, it may hold some bass, assuming other factors like depth and additional cover are also present. Current alone, in his opinion, is not that critical as a factor in positioning bass under heavy mats. Again, he says, try to look at the big picture and see how many options are available to the bass.
“Until you’ve been on the water punching and seen and experienced these types of things, it’s difficult to imagine how all of these can play an important role in your punching success,” Lane emphasizes. “That’s why you always have to be aware of the bigger picture, but spending time on the water will really help you do this.
“Another factor I consider is the weather. For me, the most exciting time to punch is when the temperature changes, particularly when it gets colder but the sun is still bright, like it is in later summer and into the fall. The fish are looking for shade, but instinctively they seem to know they have to feed more heavily in preparation for the coming winter. Punching works year-round, but this is really my favorite time to do it.”
Again, Lane emphasizes that punching can be a difficult technique to learn. “Until you actually get a bite, your confidence won’t be that high with this technique,” he says. “Your anticipation level when you begin punching will be pretty high, but it will start to fade as time goes on and you haven’t had any action.
“Just remember, this is a big-bass technique, and they’re always harder to catch. With punching, however, we have a presentation that is one of the most effective techniques ever developed to catch them. That should be reason enough for any bass fisherman to learn it.”
Originally published September 2017 in Bassmaster Magazine.
