They say it’s hot out there these days. They also say these Storm Deep Rattlin’ ThinFin thingies are the “hot” ticket.
I got the call from Nick providing me the opportunity to see for myself…
So in these certain circles I sometimes dare not admit I run around in, this particular bait has been the buzz of this year’s trolling conversation. Not having been out as much to date due to poorly synchronized schedules, I have not really had much opportunity to partake in the dragging of these critters. Add to that the fact that I am a bit of a Bandit fan when I have to put my own crank on my own rod, and you see the portrait of ThinFin deprivation start to emerge.
A lake to the immediate south would be our battleground, where the target would be… well, anything, really, but there was some mention made of hybrids, and the mention of a possible toothy critter always keeps my ears perked up and at the ready. A bonus kid was acquired for good measure (having a kid along creates an endless opportunity to blame, or add excuses for anything that goes wrong) and we hit the water.
We did make a concerted effort to locate some live shad, but to no avail. Not wanting to waste time, we assembled the necessary gear and released the ThinFin armada on this unsuspecting fishery. It didn’t take long for the finned opposition to take notice.
If you happen to check out the availability of this bait, you’ll find they come in a couple sizes, and a variety of different colors that are sure to allow you to match the bait fish where you happen to be fishing. For us, the colors that achieved consistent results were the purple and black shad patterns, and I think we had some success on the orange bellied shad as well. Another important note was the sizing, which correlated to the size of the shad the lake held. We had very few fish on the larger sized ThinFin; nearly everything we caught, regardless of size, took the smaller baits.
Settled into our battle 
stations, noting how nice and breezy and comfortable it actually was out there in that heatwave they keep warning us about, we started to immediately enjoy the bending of rods. While the action never got as heavy as this crew can become accustomed to, the consistent take of a couple fish per pass, with the occasional double, turned out to be the nice and relaxing evening I needed to escape the real world for an evening. And the pace was perfect for Ashton, my son, who had a blast and kept the busiest of all in the back of the boat.
The bait turned out to be the big winner. It proved its ability to catch about anything that is going to eat a shad. We managed SEVEN different species this trip on this bait. We caught crappie, a lot of white bass, several – including a nice 18-20″ wiper, a largemouth bass, a keeper walleye, a saugeye, and several channel cats as well.
And did not have to blame too much on the kid. That’s a win.
