Smart new lures to help all anglers land that metrey

Anyone who regularly gets amongst the barra knows just how many different fishing lure styles and techniques there are nowadays.

The suspending Atomic Shiner 85mm accounted for barra like this 96cm fish during the run-off this year

Anyone who regularly gets amongst the barra knows just how many different fishing lure styles and techniques there are nowadays.

With hard-body swimming minnows, you can cast and retrieve or troll, and then you can vary how you do either of those using different speeds, pausing and jigging.

Naturally, depth also plays a huge part in deciding which hard-body, swimming lure and technique to use.

The use of hard-body, surface, noise-making lures is a favourite for all barra fishermen because of the loud and visual strikes that they evoke.

Fishing guide Andy Taylor holds a client’s metre-plus barra, caught on a suspending Atomic Shiner Double Deep

In barra fishing, nothing gets the heart racing faster than a catatonic surface strike right at the boat, with water exploding into your face and the rod bending instantly into a full curve over the gunwale.

Once upon a time, it was all about hard-bodies, but not any more; the barra angler now has a near endless choice of soft plastics for barra fishing, and knowledge of the various techniques you can use with them.

There are various prawn imitations out there that hardly need moving along the bottom for a barra to have a whack.

But you can fish softies fast too, or with a simple slow roll, or with a lift and drop, and vary the weight to adjust sink speed and effectiveness in current … and some come with fish-attracting scents that really do work.

And what about weedless soft-plastic fishing? Hasn’t that opened a Pandora’s box of fishing opportunities?

With weedless, you can get right into the barra’s living room – down deep into the middle of the snags – and not get hooked on the timber.

It seems too that both hard-bodies and soft plastics are getting bigger and bigger as an increasing number of anglers are realising that the dream of catching a metrey can be more easily achieved with a bigger lure.

How many photos have I published this year of huge barra caught on big Bombers, big Reidy’s or big soft plastics?

Moving on, one of the more recent barra fishing trends to gain momentum is the use of suspending lures.

Particularly in the cooler months, when you sometimes need to get a lure right in a barra’s face, a suspending lure can be deadly.

Basically, what we’re talking about is a hard-body, swimming minnow that, once wound down to its achievable depth, and then given slack line, will not float up to the surface nor sink to the bottom; it suspends exactly where you stopped winding it.

It means you can then apply subtle jerks with your rod tip, followed by a pause that may last several seconds, and thus work the lure at its suspending depth and keep it in the strike zone much longer than with conventional floating minnows.

The sensation in suspending minnows has been the little Jackal Squirrel which gets down to about 3m.

It’s definitely a handy lure in the estuaries and some tidal rivers, and despite its size, has accounted for a motza of metreys across northern Australia.

Rapala suspending X-Raps have also proven deadly in shallower waters like those holding barra in Darwin Harbour and Bynoe Harbour.

Now here’s a heads-up: a suspending lure to look out for is the Classic 120 suspender. The Classic 120 is a hugely-popular lure with barra anglers … I always carry at least one tray of Classics in different colours and diving depths.

However, the only thing that has been missing from the Classic range is a suspending lure for those occasions when the barra need to have the lure kept in front of their faces.

I understand that the new suspending Classic 120 will be in tackle shops shortly, and I for one can’t wait.

Another suspending barra lure quite new on the market but already accounting for some great fish is the Atomic Shiner Double Deep.

Distributed in Australia by Frogleys Offshore, the Shiner comes in four sizes but only the 85mm and 75mm are suited to barra fishing; they dive to about 4.5m and 3.5m.

I tried the Shiners during the run-off earlier this year and barra went for them with gusto.

Guides at the Arnhemland Barramundi Nature Lodge have also been trying out Atomic Shiners for just a few weeks now and they love them.

Here’s what regular guide, Andy Taylor, had to say about them: “The go-to lure at the moment has to be the Atomic Shiner ... this great little deep diver has accounted for many different species and, after catching two metreys on them in a week, I’m hooked.

“Once their hooks are upgraded with Decoys or similar, they suspend perfectly and, with their beautiful, tight, deep-diving action, are the perfect lure for snag bashing, deep drains or anywhere for that matter.

“I’m finding clients can use them with ease, either with a pausing twitch or varied winding speed, and even the slow roll goes great,” Andy said.

So there you go … if you don’t have a handful of suspending lures in your tackle box, it’s time you popped into your local tackle shop.