There’s no better way to consistently catch monster bags on tournament day than by extracting fish from the thickest cover on a lake, and there maybe no one better at it on either tour than Florida pro Randall Tharp.
With a flipping stick in his hand flinging a big Reins tungsten weight, he’s whacked big limits in Florida and Alabama, west to California, north to Champlain and just about everywhere in between.
His Phoenix boat has a full compartment of Reins weights ready to go, but any time he has a heavy flipping weight or heavy Punch Shot he feels especially likely to win. Over hundreds of thousands of pitches and flips, he’s developed a system to tell him whether to punch with a ¾ ounce weight, the 2 ½ ounce monster, or something in between.
“It’s about being efficient,” he said. “Of course you want to use the most compact weight possible, but if two out of four flips don’t go through, you need to change. I want nine out of ten to go through.”
In the heavy grass of Okeechobee, 1 ½ ounces is often his starting point, but on northern lakes he’s more likely to begin with a ¾ ounce version.
“The rate of fall is everything,” he explained. “And while there are a few rare occasions where I’ll go heavier around sparser cover to generate a reaction bite, usually I’ll match the amount of weight to the thickness of the cover.”
Tharp breaking down the Reins Punch shot during an interview at icast 2015
In recent years he’s experimented extensively with the Punch Shot to adjust his rate of fall, not only mixing up the soft plastic he puts on the rig, but also the thickness of his skirt. Adding or removing some strands can radically alter not just the rate of fall, but also its profile.
“Big fish like a bait that displaces a lot of water,” he added. “Around more sparse cover, not solid mats, the heavy Punch Shot is what I’ll use. In that situation it has almost replaced a big jig for me
Read the rest of Tharp's Big Weight System including his gear, weight systems, line and more at Optimum Baits.
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