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.