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.

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....

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.

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.

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.