Realbait and Barramundi

Barramundi destroy my lures, and the most of the cases, they were wooden baits. However, another nightmare entered my list.

It was my son casting Lucky Craft's Realbait. He said "this doesn't sink fast, so can I make it like a Texas rig?" A 8 year old kid wanted to make this slow-sinking bigbait a Texas rig. So, I asked him why. He said "well, since Chatterbait wiggles good in the water because it's got the weight on its head, I set a Texas sinker on this bigbait, and then it sinks fast and should swim better."

I didn't know it swims better or not, but we gave it a try.

He pitched a short distance and looked at it and liked the way it swam. I was standing besides him, and he cast long and waited like a couple of seconds to retrieve in the middle range.
Kaboom! First cast, a big hit. He almost dropped his rod. But fish came off. I mean, it was never hooked up. Just a big bite.
He reeled the lure in. We found it was chopped in half.

So, he got mad, stopped fishing, and started playing Nintendo 3DS he brought.
Therefore, I decided to buy him another Lucky Craft's Realbait. Now he's begging me to go fish. But he's got flu, and I don't think he can go fish weekend. So sad.

Spinnerbait and Barramundi 003

Does anyone know this spinnerbait? The blade shows "Glamour Shad."
I found it in my old tackle box, I probably bought it when I visited Bass Pro Shops in Atlanta back in late 90's or early 200X. It probably bought it because it was cheap, and that's all I remember.

I purchase many same things at one shopping. For spinnerbait, I still use  Vibra Shaft and Bulldog spinnerbait.

Anyway,  I just found this Glamour Shad in my box and didn't care much, thus I cast it to catch barramundi. What happened was it caught a lot! I think I caught at least 5 barra on it that day.

As an angler, after all those great result in one day, I went to search it on the net. What I found was the manufacture's probably bankrupted or something, and no one produces this bait anymore. So sad!

Spinnerbait and Barramundi 002

My all time favorite of the favorites. The only spinnerbait that my wife casts is Gary Yamamoto's Gary Spin. 

This is the shit, but I can't throw it any more because it is the last spare I have left.

This is almost like an antique. I found it in my tackle box which I hasn't opened for about 20 years... When my wife saw it in my tackle box, she screamed so bad like she met a friend whom she hasn't seem him over 20 years. 

Our barra instantly destroys it if I try.

However, my wife doesn't care it's the last one or not. She is not a collector type of person, and she will cast it for fun. So, I gotta hide before she does a crazy thing.  

There is another all time favorite that I don't have in my stock. It's BlueFox Big Bass Roland Martin spinnerbait.  I can't find it anymore at store... I miss it.

Spinnerbait and Barramundi

Hey, no one told me that spinnerbaits work for catching barramundi! I go to a few local tackle stores, but I have never seen spinnerbaits at all. But I thought spoon works, spin-tail jig works, then why not spinnerbait.

 

 High Pitcher of O.S.P. One of the best spinnerbaits that people say. I like it, too. Yeah, this one produced the largest catch on spinnerbait. It was a 6 kg barra.

Another High Pitcher has done good jobs, but the arm is almost broken, so it needs to be retired soon.

My all time favorite spinnerbait is Delta Force of Evergreen. This dude dodges through weeds and laydowns so good due to its head shape. But barra's basically on the open water, and it hasn't get me any bites yet.

Spooky Jack and Barramundi

Well, on the different day, I wrote about Monster Jack which gets broken so bad but produces a lot of catches. Here is another killer bait but breaks. Spooky Jack from Fish Arrow, the same brand of Monster Jack.

This is really a good ol' bait, I mean it. Every time I go to tackle stores and I find it, I have no choice. I buy it. It's almost 5,000 yen ($50), not a cheap toy. I wanna play with it nicely, but barramundi don't go easy on it!

 

It is a 190mm long, 2 1/2oz big and heavy and sinking bait. You can cast a long distance and swim any ranges you want.

 

You see this pic. You find it what's wrong?

The jointed tail part of its body is broken. The tail part doesn't have a hook but destroyed. What happened was Barramundi bit it hard. I missed hooking, and I felt something different when I started retreiving again. I reeled it in and looked at it....
The tail part was destroyed in one massive bite.

I thought Moster Jack and Spooky Jack of Fish Arrow are some sorta wooded weak baits. I think I was wrong. Barramundi is too strong.

Monster Jack and Barramundi

One of the most barramundi catching baits for me is absolutely Fish Arrow's Monster Jack. Maybe, I have bought 10 of them, and all of them were destroyed by barra.... Expensive lure, though.

Fish Arrow Monster Jack

There are many pros and cons of this lure.
Bad points are expensive and easy to get broken; however, it catches many barra. It has caught more barra than bass I used do in Japan.

 

Monster Jack is a wooden bait. Not plastic. Therefore, it contains a strong buoyancy . When Timberflash (Evergreen) is too aggressive on the surface and Silent Killer (Deps) is too tight to appeal to barra, I would choose Monster Jack. 

This means Monster Jack sits in the middle of 2 of kickass baits; consequently, I mostly start casting MJ at the fishery. 

But Like I said, it breaks up very easily. The tail comes off very easily. The hook heaton comes off easily. The worst is the jointed body broke off after catching some fish. 

When my Monster Jack retires its mission, it's always the body joint broken. 

Maybe, Monster Jack is for bass fihsing, not for Barramundi fishing....

Faith and Barramudi

Jerkbait is one of the best choices of fishing barramundi if you care of the numbers of fish you catch. I don't care of numbers too much because I like to throw bigbaits whether I catch fish or not. But I will bring jerkbaits for fun.

There are 2 types of jerkbaits when I look around the fishery and guys using. Floating model and sinking model. In the morning, barra is really lazy, and they tend to bite on the sinking type than the floating type. Thus, if I really care about the number of fish I catch today, the first choice in the morning will be the sinking jerkbait.

But I wonder why I have more floating types than sinking types in my tackle box in these days....

Anyway, when I bass fish, I use a long-bill, suspended type, too. Staysee (Lucky Craft), Squirrel (Jackall), K-IV (HMKL), Suger Deep (Bassday), and Kicker Eater (Evergreen) are all good stuff. But my current favorite long-bill jerkbait must be Faith of Evergreen.

I don't know why, but Faith doesn't produce many bites. But once it hooks up, the size of barramundi is huge. I never caught barra smaller than 5 kg on Faith.

Thai local frog lures and barramundi

There are some Thai local lures. Many of them are targeted and designed to catch snakeheads. I went to a local tackle store, but they didn't carry many choices. Thus, I decided to mail-order them from store called 7 Seas.

 

My baits came like this. It's always nice to open it. My wife said to do it in my room, but I gotta do this in front of TV. I wanna watch TV and do my baits at the same time.

 

Here they are!

 

 

 These are design to catch snakeheads, NOT barramundi in the first place. I am not sure these work on barra at all. However, I try it anyway.

Imakatsu made painting in the extreme way!

Simply awesome.

 

These pics are taken from Imakatsu website.

K. Imae Top Secret 

They are NOT live baits. They are called Super Live 3D Painting. And the pictured lure is called Bassroid. Below is Ayuroid 3D painting version.

And this is one of my favorite baits, a red-head jerkbait. This has caught tons of barramundi for me.

OK, I need to purchase the Bassroid when Imakatsu released because I wanna a direct face-to-face catching match against my redhead, and see which wins.

Modified S-Waver and Barramundi

I don’t like to modify the baits by myself. I don’t even want to true-tune the line eye. I open the package of lures, and I want them ready to use, period. But sometimes, from time to time, I feel like I wanna do some arrangements on the baits.

When barramundi gets spooky and slow down, the school tends to stay on the bottom. Even a living bait swims just in front of their faces, they ignore. But I felt like I didn’t wanna use tiny lures to do finesse. Thus, I had no choice; I gotta work on customizing swimbait to catch fish on swimbait because I was into swimbaits at that time.

I didn’t wanna modify my Deps Slide Swimmer or Gan Craft Jointed Claw because they are expensive lures… Thus, what I chose was River 2 Sea S-Waver. As you can see in the pic, this is what I did. I threw this lure only a few times before customizing it, but it didn't swim the way I wanted, so this is the only choice I had to modify a swimbait.

I saw Butch Brown's Huddleston customization, and I wanted to do something like that. Please see this movie on Youtube.


Butch Brown Hudd Rigging

I used 50Lb wire to hold the hook, comes in 4 times to punch the sleeve. It means this wire was as strong as 200Lb. (I know it was too much). I tied the hook by 40Lb mono filament line not to move around, and made sure not to move, I attached with the adhesive.

However, when I went to fish, this bait was sinking soooo slow. I couldn't wait it to sink it on the bottom, so I added some SuspenStrips type of lead weights (probably 2 grams) on the jaw.

I first reeled it really slow, but this bait doesn't wiggle its tail much. So, I started jerking it like a jig. Then, bang!

First strike, I caught a 2 kg (4 Lb) barra.

The second fish I caught, barra destroyed my mono filament hook holder... Well, I gotta do something about it.

Then, I caught a few Chado.
At the end, this modifying S-Waver went pretty well.

Bangkok Shower

It’s about to end Bangkok’s rainy season, but it’s getting stronger these days. Some call this squall; we call it “Guerrilla Rainstorm” in Japan because it looks like a guerrilla, an irregular military unit operating in small bands in occupied territory to undermine the enemy, as by surprise raids.

Bangkok shower is basically the same thing to other tropical reef. It suddenly comes and stops. I was in the client’s office the other day. They were just 500 meters from my office. When I got out their office, it showered so bad. I mean the roads were already flooding, I can’t even see 10 meters ahead of myself.

This is a picture I took from my condo’s north side. 10 minutes later, it showered bad.


And this sort of sudden rain comes all the time, but it never rained when I go fish…. Yet. Perhaps, next time….

Spintail lure and Barramundi

When it gets colder, Barramundi starts not to bite well. Especially the temperature gets early 20 degrees in the morning, barra shuts down. If you wanna catch barra constantly in this season, you don’t want to forget to bring blade baits such as Sonnar.

It’s a good old simple technique; lift and fall on the bottom. I thought that spintail bait would produce more bites if this shinny little Sonnar could do a good job. Consequently, I went to search a Little George in my tuckle box and found one. I hadn’t seen Little George since I got married. So, it must've been sitting in my box for 14 years!
So, I took it to fishing, but nothing bites on it. I still don’t know why. But other spintail baits caught barra.

We have many spintail baits in Japan, and one of the best barramundi catching baits is Jado’s Kurukuru Revenge. It’s a 21g,  5mm small metal chunk with a blade on its tail, but this thing is another killer in the water.

Basically, barramundi like lipless crank. I use it as a pilot lure to search the range that a school of barra stay in. Kurukuru is the same thing. I can cast long and keep the range I want, with the appearing blade. It is unnecessary to do any special technique, just throw it out in a fan-like form covering different ranges of water until barra bite. Once I know the range and angle, I change the bait to jerkbait and move it a little slower.   

A good ol' barra producer.

Magnum Long A and Barramundi

I was not expecting to stay in Thailand like this long when I received this assignment. My company promised me to pull me back from this country to Japan after my project finished. And also, I had an agreement to go home 7 days per month. But they broke the promise. I was sent to manage the whole big project (marketing) alone for our client, and every time I proposed new additional things, clients liked and ordered them. So, the project got bigger and bigger, and I didn’t have time to go home. In one way, my company broke the promise. In another way, I made the consequences by myself….

Anyway, I didn’t have time to go home in Japan; thus, I asked my wife to buy and ship me the lures from Japan. I asked her to buy me “bigbaits”. She asked back, how big. I told her “just choose something big.” She is an angler, too, so she knows lures. I even sent her pictures, names of the baits, and she sent me a package which contained this crazy lure, Magnum Long A.

I know Long A for a long time; however, I never expected the magnum size. She said “you said something big”, but I was expected Jerry Rago’s or Fish Arrow’s or Gan Craft’s bigbaits, not a 7 incher Long A. You know what I mean, right?

I thought this crazily long Magnum Long A is a joke just like many people thing Slide Swimmer 250 is a joke. But I thought I should give it a try at least once before I sell it on eBay. But what happened is, the first cast I made, Barramundi hit it hard. Even it hit the bait a couple of times before I reeled it in. I didn’t wanna believe the fact barra bit it, so I decided not to cast it back to the same spot. I moved to a different spot instead. Then cast, Kaboom! It caught a 5kg barra in the second cast.

What I like about Magnum Long A is, first, the body material; it’s made of polycarbonate which is very strong. It can be one of the strongest hard lure body ever made.
Second point is the way it wiggle and wobble. The way it makes the water move in sub surface is something other swimbaits or jerkbaits would not produce. Due to the large lip it has, it makes a wider body shake, and it can be retrieved slower than anglers can expect. It can be the same speed of regular swimbaits.

I don’t remember how many Barramundi I caught on this lure. A must.

Secret Garden @ Sathorn, Bangkok

Sathorn is a center of the businesses in Bangkok. Not really shopping area, not really residential area. It’s the business place. Many foreign guys work in this area, too. A good thing about this area is that I can find good restaurants very easily.

The other day, myself and my stuff were at client’s office in Sathorn for the presentation. We skipped out launch to prepare the documents, so when the presentation finished, all we wanted was to eat.

Then, there was Secret Garden near our client’s building.

It’s a Thai fusion restaurant. They can serve foods spacy, but the way they cool is just fine to me.  Even if I didn’t say to make them not spicy, they were alright.


I have tried Thai food many times because it's cheaper than Japanese or others. But this time, it was a little expensive.

 

Local Thai food is like 30 to 40 baht, which is 90 cents to 1 dallor and 20 cents. However, food at Secret Garden is like 300 baht per each dish. I know, it's 10 times more. 

 

People usually eat food with a white rice, but we tried a brown rice this day. One of my stuff is pregnant, and she wanted a brown rice because it is rich in nutrients.  

 

After we ate all, we ate cakes and cups of coffee. Then, it was 1800 baht. 

It was superb, though.

Secret Garden @ Sathorn

Bigbait custom and Barramundi

Barramundi is a lot larger than black bass, but many Thai people use little bitty 2-inch lures to catch barra. Well, I think it depends on the fisheries where you fish. If the average size of barra is small, I’d definitely choose small baits. But the average is 5kg to 10kg, I’d select bigaits. The hard body swimbaits, that’s what I meant, such as Slide Swimmer 250, Spro BBZ-1 Swimbait 8”, Jerry Rago’s Walking Rat etc. I don’t mind the bait has a lip or lipless, glide style or cranking type, jointed or one big chunky jerkbait. I like it big because size matters.

Here is one question, the bigbaits produce more catches or what. I’d have to say, no, it doesn’t. Catching barra or bass on big ol’ baits is just fun. And likewise, I believe big fish bite on bigbaits. That’s why I cast the baits with some hope.

I still don’t know why, but I have tried many different bigbaits, but No.1 must be Slide Swimmer 175 (Deps). This is a killer lure.

I have tried many glide baits, but this one somehow works better than others in many cases. I especially like its silicon skin (soft shell plastic on the outside its body). Compared to Jointed Claw (Gan Craft), Slide Swimmer doesn’t go slide and turn around wider; this is much tighter. And it sinks a little faster than Jointed Claw.
This should be mentioned. Slide Swimmer 175 produces more bites in the steady retrieve. I may jerk a little bit when not producing bites. But I would retrieve it without any action when barramundi’s in the mood of feeling. When it’s not in the mood, I would change it to Jointed Claw which I can reel it slower, and it sinks slower.

It is a must item to go fishing for me, but this one heavy duty lure makes me tired casting and reeling if I do it all day.

Fun arium @ Suk soi 26

I can't go fishing every weekend because of my family. I have to take care of them.
I didn't ask them to come to Thailand, but they did. Well, my son visited me last summer from Japan, and it was his first oversea's travel. We went fishing, went to swim at the ocean, went to some other fun places, and he liked 'em all. So, after he and my wife went back to Japan and a couple of weeks later, he called me and said, "I am gonna move to Bangkok." To a 8 year old boy who doesn't speak English or Thai, moving to Thailand is a huge commitment and experience. He doesn't like spacy food, but he liked this warm weather and good ol' fruits and stuff. He liked fishing, too. So, he decided it.

I admire that. And I decided, too. I wanna go fishing every weekend, but if he (or maybe my wife) asks me to take them to anywhere, I go out with them.
You think it's normal? Do you think an angler like me wants to go shopping with a woman who doesn't buy a thing but look around all day without a plan, and I am comfortable with it? Hell no!! But I keep my mouth shut and go out with her although I don't want to, because I wanna go fish.

Anyway, Bangkok is not the best city to raise children. No park, no playground, no soccer fields or anything for kids to play at. I mean NOTHING. There are a couple of parks in Bangkok. One park is 5 minutes from my condo, but it's no ground to play around. Just trees and running spots to go around. Another park is just a big pond and a walk way around it. The largest park is currently occupied by people who participated Coup d'etat. They live there with camping tents...

Thanks to my condo. They have a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a kid's playground so that kids can play, but not at every condo.

Thus, how do kids, especially my son, discharge their enery? We go to Fun arium.
http://www.funarium.co.th/

It's an indoor playground. In Japan, we have Aeon Fantasy. There is Aeon Fantasy in Bangkok, too. But they are small, and my son says not fun at all. Therefore, we choose to go to Fun arium.
There are a huge and complicated jangle jim, basketball court, bicycling field, rock climbing walls, cooking studio, drawing studio, and many things. Kids at Fun arium run around all the time look extremely excited.

Food over there is not bad at all. This day I ate a Thai traditional noodle. The stuff asked me "spacy or not spacy". I ordered spacy one. What happended is I had a stomachache until late night....

I wish Bangkok government produces a park for kids, only for kids. 

Wines supplied

One of my stuff whose brother owns a bar in J-Avenue in Thong lo, Bangkok, brought wines for me, actually for my wife because she knows my wife loves drinking wines. If I didn't prohibit her to drink wines too much, she'd drink a bottle per day. Well, think about it how much it costs to drink a bottle every day.... Anyway, my stuff brings bottles of wines for me from time to time. Of course, I pay. 

This time she brough:
Villavelvedere Chardonnay Delle Venezie（Italian）x 2 bottles

Momentos Cabernet Sauvignon （Argentina）x 1 bottle

 
Coli Chianti Classico （Italian）x 1 bottle

The total price for this time was 1200 baht, but I still don't know whether this was the retail price or the cost. She says "I got new wines for you, there you go. 1200 baht" with her hand to pay at this moment. I laughed and paid.... but her brother's bar is located at the center of the most expensive and fashionable area. Therefore, I don't think it was a retail price.

Well, either way, I shold pass the bottles to my wife and ask the taste.