Core Tackle has officially launched its first-ever soft plastic, the Fin Swimbait, and founder Matt Allen took the bait public on Lake Uchi with a single-episode breakdown that doubled as a product release and an on-water tutorial. The day delivered a 3 lb 3 oz largemouth and — more surprisingly — a rare 3 lb 7 oz smallmouth, a class of fish Allen had never previously caught on the lake.
Allen framed the bait as one he had deliberately held back. "I waited 2 years to show you this new bait," he said in the title, adding that he has been throwing it as a quiet alternative to crankbaits and spinner baits all spring: "I'm catching a pile of quality fish on it."
Technically, he described the Fin Swimbait as "a really unique swimbait-style bait that has a rocking side-to-side motion on a straight retrieve, which makes it great to work as kind of a cast-and-wind bait." Its sweet spot is the middle water-clarity range — "a little bit too clean for a crankbait or a spinner bait, but maybe not so clean that the fish will actually still be up on the bank biting."
The first bite came from a 3 lb 3 oz largemouth on a windblown rock bank that "tore up" the bait on the strike. "That's a chunk right there," Allen said. The bonus was a smallmouth hooked further off the bank near a main-lake point leading into a spawning pocket — "Oh my gosh, look at that smallie. That is a big smallie for out here on Uchi," Allen told viewers. "This is the first smallie I've ever actually caught out here on that Fin Swimbait." It weighed 3 lb 7 oz.
The retrieve is deliberately aggressive. Allen runs a half-ounce head so the Fin Swimbait can drag along the rock. "I'm deliberately digging this thing down the rocks, trying to make bottom contact as if you would kind of like a swing head, a croc bait, or even if you're throwing like a little heavier chatterbait," he said. The purpose is to generate the same reaction strikes those harder-working baits produce but with a subtler profile fish haven't seen all month.
Colour is hand-tuned. The bait's construction doesn't allow laminate colour runs, so Allen paints his with Spike-It pens — a blue line down the back, chartreuse on the flank, all laid over a red-pearl base. Permanent markers, he said, underperform: "The baits I did with Sharpie are not performing nearly as well as the ones I'm doing with the Spike It."
Allen also used the video to reset expectations around Core Tackle's Insider Program. "I think that people got thrown off by the word prototype," he said. "We're sending you what we believe are finished product, a bait that we would take to market and we plan to take to market." Insiders are receiving the Fin Swimbait and an unreleased Core Tackle jig head — also featured in the video — via monthly drops on coretackle.com.