Itsy bitsy lure saves the day!

SPOONMINNOW

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Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
265
Finesse lures usually mean lures 2-3" weighing near nothing or nothing as in floating lures. I've come up with a term - micro-finesse - for catching those little tail nippers whose mouths are too small to grab a lure deep enough to be hooked.
Recently I fished a lake under a bright sun with no clouds. The day was hot, but a steady breeze made it tolerable. The bite was DEAD! As I was calling it quits and returning to the launch, my lure started getting attacked by year-old fish no bigger than 3.5"
Three or more fish on shallow flats that dropped into water 8' or deeper, would attack on the same retrieve, but no hooksets.
I never before used a 1/64 oz jigs with #8 hooks, but figured I may as well just to see what was nipping my Crappie Magnet lure. The lure chosen was 1" cut off the tail of slim plastic worm. It looked like a mini-stick and exhibited a nice slow slow-falling, darting /wobbly action. Got Ya Ya little *^*%*s!

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I fished the same areas around the lake and caught not only 4" fish but some nice sunfish, crappie and yellow perch along with some small bass.
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I changed lures to this small spike tail and caught this decent yellow perch:
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I was surprised to see fish striking small bait fish on the surface near the middle of the lake. No way was I going to pass up that easy strike, and sure enough, it added a dozen fish to the total in different areas in 18 FOW! This happened around 4:30 pm. Total caught - 63 fish along with a doz. missed hook sets.
The day was saved by using super-light jigs rigged with super-small lures. No doubt a light feather or hair jig would have done as well, which I will try next time after this DANG 90+ HEAT WAVE subsides! :censored:)
 
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SPOONMINNOW

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2016
Messages
265
f/up
I went fishing with a buddy and gave him a new creation of mine: the paddle tail of a RUNCL swimbait attached to a small tube body using a candle to heat the ends.
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We caught over 80 fish that day - few that were keepers, such as my buddy's yellow perch and small sunfish:
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We also caught small bass and crappie:
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Note: that small paddle tail gave the lure a fast tail flutter that fish came back for on the 2nd retrieve after a missed hookset. The 1/32 oz jig with #8 hook, hooked a majority of fish, helped by our light action rods.

The day was marred by a broken rod tip, a spinning reel with a line mess at the spool and my sonar that stopped working midway through. The best part of the day was finding three patterns that got us 83 fish to be exact.
 
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