Over the last few months I have been doing a lot of flounder fishing. (Go figure)
And I have never seen a time when I had to go to a real finesse style of fishing to catch fish. People tend to think flounder are just a big, dumb, ugly fish you can drag anything in front of to get a strike but that is just not true. They can get super picky.
Lately on Sabine Lake, the fish have been either short striking or holding the lure on the very edge of their mouths. If you set the hook, you pull it away from them. This is even if you wait a long time to do so.
What I have been doing is scaling down a 4-inch curl-tailed grub using a 3-inch. I am also fishing very very slowly. I am talking super slow and with slack line.
The fish have not been on an aggressive bite and by taking this approach I have been able to catch some fish, however, as I wrote earlier they are just holding it on the edge of their mouths. Or at least about half of the ones that bite.
A way to get them to inhale it once they have bite is to let the line go completely slack and just sit there or lightly reel up the slack and put on some pressure. Sometimes this will cause the flounder to run with the lure and if it does they will often take in deeper in the mouth.
Kind of finicky for just a big, dumb flatfish, eh?
The author has been using the Bomber Saltwater Grade Mud Minnow Curtail tipped with shrimp. He takes off 1/2-inch off the front as the fish have been tending to strike short.