IndianaFinesse

Most of the time, with most lures, they're pretty dang good at throwing them.. And anyways, a few fish dying every once in a while is just part of the sport imo.

The true original midwest finesse guys (started by Chuck woods) started out just as guys trying to catch a bunch of fish on the cheap, using things like Beatle spins and marrabu jigs. This ran somewhat parallel to early slider fishing btw. This progressed through a few phases where certain techniques were popular until they started using small plastics on a small, light wire and small sized mushroom heads fished in shallow water. A few years later the popularity of the technique exploded, resulting in zman marketing and labeling "Ned rig" components and have been riding that train introducing new plastics to capitalize on it since then, unfortunately muddying the waters as to it's definition. The new upsized components are trying to force fit it into something it isn't.

Sounds like a cool experience, but geez, I've been preaching this for years along with t-9 and a few others lol

They still sell like hot cakes everywhere I've seen

Yeah, I normally would have waited but I've got a big tournament this weekend that I'll want the reel for, cuz it's replacing one that's worn out and unusable. Still landed a big deal, payed $145 ish for it using a 20% off code. Was hoping ebay would have one on father's day, but no dice for me.

I just ordered a curado k 2 days ago, lol. Should have waited another couple days.

There was massive amounts of all kinds of grass, everything from coontail to pads. Around the docks (with the exception of pads and a few other types, idk the different varieties very well, and on undeveloped shorelines the weedline grew shallower) there is an inside weedline around 4-5 foot deep, and an outside weedline around 25 foot. 8-12 feet of clarity everywhere. There is just acres and acres in pads in some areas. Definitely a fun lake, hope it's on the schedule again next year. Btw, we're sitting in 6th place in the aoy standings out of 131+ boats, only a couple points out of 4th, and top 4 in aoy and top 2 in the state event on Monroe in a week and a half get a national championship invite, so you can bet we'll be swinging for the fences on that one.

Geez, y'all can't think of something more affordable to do the job well, lol. What do y'all think of the casitas and the other lower end shimano reels?

Launch was awful, luckily we were able to stay with friends that have a place on the lake and they did an on the water check in which made things smoother for us. We launched from Syracuse but most of us including ourselves went to wawasee to fish.

Hey guys, I'm looking for a baitcasting reel for shallow cranks and smaller lipless, mostly in the 1/4 ounce range. So it has to have a smaller spool capable of throwing lite baits, with a low profile frame. I don't have a set budget, less is better of course though. I have 2 curado 70s which I love and would buy another, but would like to spend less if possible. Any suggestions? Btw, it will either be paired with a 6 '6" medium mod/ fast rod or a 7' medium moderate depending on what I'm planning on using it for that day.

Just got back from a tournament at wawasee, which is an awesome lake to go catch a ton of fish at btw. Caught 120+ fish in 2 days of fishing. Anyway, there was 2 main patterns going on Saturday when we were prefishing. Dropshotting offshore and frogging the openings of canals, and not being a good dropshotter but both my partner and I are pretty decent froggers, we went for that bite. tournament morning it looked like 80% of the boats were offshore, and the vast majority of the rest were running the canal openings like we were, so we ditched that plan after 45 minutes and went pattern hunting. found a new pattern of running mainlake lilly pads (the ones that extended above the water for some reason) with frogs, bombing them way up into the pads and trying to get them in the water between the pads occasionally. The fish back in those weren't as pressured as the ones around the edges which is why we were so successful doing it. Unfortunately, it resulted in an awful hookup and landing ratio, but we put a 9.66 pound limit together and culled a few times. We figured we'd need 15 pounds to win because of the numbers of 3-4 pound fish we saw slap our frogs and pull off, so we didn't think out limit would do much. We come into weigh in and it turns out our limit put us into 2nd place out of 92 boats, only 0.15 pounds behind 1st! No one else in the top 12 were frogging, all offshore. You can bet they were jealous of our frog bite after dropshotting all day lol, even if my wrists and elbows would have argued differently after 2 days of fishing frogs and slamming hooks home. A great finish, but to add insult to injury big bass was only 3.5 pounds, and we had a 4+ pounder that pulled off a foot from the net that would have won both the tournament and big bass for us. We had so many lost fish that would have won it, it isn't even funny. A surprisingly low weight tournament, even though a tournament the previous weekend only took 7 pounds to win, but lots of fish were weighed in. That lake is just loaded with bass, everyone was catching at least small ones. Next tournament is the state championship at Monroe, top 2 finishers from that event and top 4 from aoy get a place in the national championship, we aren't likely to make top 4 aoy so we're gunning for top 2 in state I just hope there's some frogging going there, but being monroe, anything can happen.

I've been playing around with it the past couple weeks and the results have pretty much echoed t-9, works fine some days but others they just don't commit as well and eat it half-way back. Overall I prefer a round bend or ewg 3/0 worm hook, depending on what I want for fall rate.

they're mostly post spawn here and the bluegill are spawning big time, but there is still a few on beds.

Yep, it's an annual deal around here during the post spawn, always a fun bite that most people don't take advantage of. Stupid as I'll get out though.

Sounds like exactly the kind of pattern we were running at a similar style lake in a recent tourney(Brookville Indiana), except you guys finished a little higher than we did The competitor in us always wants to come out on top, but that's still a good finish -good job as usual.

Upper 60s, they're mostly postspawn but there's a few spawners still locked on.

Bass fishing is absolutely on fire right now, every time I've been out in the past few days it's been keeper after keeper bass. Last night we picked up 35 bass in 3 hours, 30 of which were over 15". Best 5 weighed 19 pounds with big bass weighing five and a quarter, with loads of 2.5-3 pound fish. Throwing frogs and weightless trick worms around any floating muck we can find.

Weightless pink trickworms twitched around the surface like who knows what, I like to call it 4 year old girl fishing lol. I like to fish them tied straight to high vis braid, especially when fishing with people that are believers in line shy fish and "matching the hatch" lol.

Had a tournament on Brookville last Sunday, prefishing on Saturday went well but there was 2 tournaments on both Saturday and Sunday, and the fish just didn't hold up to that much pressure. I expected bedding smallmouth given water temperature in the mid to low 60s, but we didn't find a single bed and all of our fish were still prespawn. We put together a very predictable pattern of running steep dropping, mainlake areas on the lower end where the channel swung in close to the shore with large rock bottom transitioning into gravel, throwing keitech 2.8s, deep jerks, and neds in 8-20 feet. Caught several limits of smallmouth prefishing, as did most people that day. Come Sunday morning, we launched as boat #126 out of 129 boats, and just barely squeaked together 2 keepers (one was luck, we saw a group of herrons on the shore and figured they had a shad school, and it turns out they did and some smallies in pursuit). Had 3 fish less than a 1/4 inch short, one literally a hair breadth short, but that's how it goes. The fish shut down and pulled off of the shoreline for the most part, some suspending and some on the bottom. Ended up in 22nd out of 129 boats, only about 30 boats weighed fish with the winning bag weighing 12.8 pounds, caught flipping largemouth in the backs of coves. The other local tournament going on Sunday only had 6 boats out of 30 weigh fish, dunno what the winning bag was. came out with a decent finish, but was a bit disappointed for a day that we expected to be culling some good smallies instead of only 2 keepers. Can't seem to shake sitting at the roughly 20% mark, guess we're consistent though lol.

They finally moved up into the shallows last week, and they're still hitting good. Shallow cranks and lipless up in the coves and some still on points, not hitting big ones yet but lots of fish in the 3 pound and smaller range. No signs of males making beds yet, but that can't be far off either. I'm very busy right now, but if you want to come out this way shoot me a pm and we'll try to work something out. I caught more keepers in the first 5 min last night than I did both prefishing and on tournament day on potoka combined, on my own lol

Yeah that thing was a beast, never seen a smallie that big in person before And i would have listened to your advice if I could have lol, unfortunately terrible fishing isn't a good enough reason to reschedule a tournament though talked to a few guys that have potoka as their home lake and they told me the exact same thing.

Just got back from the tournament at potoka, and I learned 2 things: A: My least favorite lake is not in fact Monroe, it is potoka. And B: I hope to never go back to potoka again We had a record 146 boats today, after the USA bassin tournament yesterday, plus a surprising amount of locals. No idea what won the USA bassin on Saturday, but the dozen or so we talked to all blanked. We prefished all day Saturday with 3 bites and 1 fish to show for it. Absolutely no pattern whatsoever to them. Today we drew the 2nd to last start position, which really didn't bother us cause we didn't have anything to go to anyways. Same as prefishing, we fished everything everywhere with little results. Upriver every direction, the gravel pits, mainlake points, secondary points,small coves big coves, opening or coves, causeway, standing timber, steep dropping banks, we hit everything. Ended the day with 2 lost fish to show for it, one a dink and the other would have been a solid keeper but pulled off of the jerkbait hooks. Turns out only 10 boats out of 145 weighed a fish, 135 blanked! And there were some sticks there, one of the guys finished 10th in a recent open event, made the ilf/mlf world championship, won our state tournament last year, and blanked today with only 1 bite. It was terrible, but at least we are in a 135 way tie for 11th lol.

I gotta go with @A-Jay lol. Who cares, and if they do, why do you care?

Preapawn fishing is finally going here, and dang they moved fast. On Sunday the few we caught were mainlake near wintering areas, but by Tuesday (similar results today, except we caught a few more mainlake using the wind) they were 1/2-3/4 back the coves! Not just the buck makes either, out of the 20 we caught in about 2 hours only 2 were under 14" and if 5-6 under 15", good quality fish. Getting them all on shallow cranks close to the bank.

Does anyone know what's going on at potoka? I've got a tournament there next weekend and have no idea what to expect, this weather has things so wacked out idk if they're shallow near spawning areas of it they're still mainlake or what. If anyone knows the water temperature, clarity, or what the fish are doing let me know.