ALPENA, MI – Especially studious viewers of this week’s Sudden Death Round at the 2018 Wiley X Summit Cup on Fletcher’s Pond in northern Michigan may have picked up a handy tip from Mike Iaconelli about the line he prefers in certain flipping/pitching situations.

Iaconelli flipped and pitched a jig and Berkley Devil’s Spear to isolated wood to rack up 22 pounds, 13 ounces in the second Sudden Death Round, advancing to his third Summit Cup Championship in five events. But instead of the usual heavy braid that anglers around the country routinely use to flip or pitch jigs and creature baits, Iaconelli spooled up with a lighter-test fluorocarbon main line.

“A lot of people assume when you’re flipping heavy cover, you use 60- to 65-pound braid, but there are situations where I prefer 25-pound fluorocarbon,” Iaconelli says. “The water is very, very clear in these Michigan lakes, so fluorocarbon is the deal. It’s not like Florida or Louisiana, where the water is stained. I also feel like the bait has a better action on the fall, and fluorocarbon for sure gets stuck a lot less than braid when you’re fishing wood structure like I was that round.”