SOFTIES!.......do rubbers really work!

I have been very reluctant to embrace this "new, new wave" of interest in soft plastic lures. You see, I have been around a while and can remember way back to my early Darwin fishing days (1978 - 84)...hell that's a long time ago! When Blue Fox Vibrotails were the brand new thing.

Then came Mr Twister lures and a myriad of similar inventions. Move forward a few more years and other lot of "new" soft plastic / rubber-tails were all the rage. You know, there are literally dozens of them from Bozo's to Bingo's to Zongo's or Shimano's.........I must confess, I haven't tried them all but have certainly given them a fair go and due respect.

Yes!.......they do catch a lot of fish and under the right conditions will absolutely brain them, out fish a hard body lure 5 - 1.

BUT NOT ALWAYS!.........I am very fussy with my fishing and the Yo Yo effect of "jigging" softies along the bottom, in the deep holes etc. just does not excite me the way a hard bodied lure does. Cast to likely looking cover, twitch your lure tantalizingly, crank it down and pause, twitch and BOOF!

Man I love it. Its a very personal thing I know but that's how I am. Often my fishing involves drifting quite quickly down rain swollen tropical rivers and you just don't have the time to wait for a plastic to "do its thing".

Leave me alone, don't try to change my mind, I'm pretty set in my ways mate...........BUT what's that lure Keith. What the hell is a ZEREK?

Morning tea on the Johnstone

Anyway, last Sunday week, Keith Graham and I headed south to fish the Johnstone. There was reason for this choice. There were neap tides on this day with only .3m of movement. I deduced that with the amount of rainfall that we had had at the time, there should be a least some river flow to give us some movement. "No run, No fun" is the motto here and so it was decided.

I was quite surprised that we were able to get up to the old South Johnstone road bridge, the shallow sandy bottom stopped our upstream movement but we still had heaps of water to traverse back downstream.

Nice sooty on that SR5

I clipped on my favourite Rapala SR5 in gold.....I can't even remember what Keith tried first and we were away. Casting to bankside vegetation, grass overhangs and snags, we soon found a few willing sooties and JP's. But the fish just seemed a bit disinterested with our offerings and even though we were catching, it was a bit slow. We changed lures a few times, switched to the heavier barra gear when conditions looked right and back again. Was it the clear conditions, the extreme heat and humidity or just the lack of good water flow.

My first sooty on a Zerek

I have a surprise for you Mr Marsh, Keith explained.....and out of his secret tackle bag Keith produced a couple of these new Zerek soft plastic prawns. They looked good!

Keith and a rare Silver Grunter

Juvenile tarpon

These lures are quite unique in the soft plastic department. They have one single hook passing through the main body and with a simple push of the fingers, can be fished with the hook point either exposed or embedded into a groove on the top of the main body...ingenious I though. I can cast right into the structure and weed and not have the lure hang up. The tail part is segmented for flexible life like action but here too, modern materials sees these sections connected via a subtle but strong  Kevlar strap. Very lifelike indeed and the colour scheme was impressive.

Spotties (archer fish)

JP's just loved em!

We drifted along and cast.....these things were amazing. All manner of fish were finding them extremely attractive and I think Keith registered half a dozen "hits" from small fish before he finally hooked up to a quality sooty...or was it a jack...or a JP....who knows, who cares.

Now that's a sooty!

 

These things were working where the hard bodies were just hard work!

We cast to back eddies and landed quality sooties.......we cast under overhanging trees and caught heaps of hungry JP's....we cast to deep banks and caught tarpon and every now and again a nice little barra would engulf the Zerek.

Even the barra go into the act

Stop smiling Keith - nice Zerek

In these conditions, with little water movement and heaps of time to let the lures slowly float naturally down before we twitched them on the rod tip, they were dynamite.

Ah!...a sooty on a hard body, Flat Jack!



A quality jack on a Zerek

See....he wanted this one.

Man I was so impressed.........we landed some quality fish too as the images hereabouts attest to our luck on the day. Am I convinced....will I use the Zerek prawns again......YOU BET I WILL!

I can't wait to try them again this weekend and if I can make it to Bransford's Tackle Shop in time, I'll stock up on the whole darn range. They are that good.

Catch you on the water, regards Les
www.fishingcairns.com.au