A few months back, I received some lures from a couple of Australian manufacturers, and I had a chance to try them in the waters around the southern side of Cape Cod. There were two types of lures — swimming plugs in varying sizes and colors from Predatek (a company based in Port McQuarie — www.Predatek.com) and an assortment of jigs made by Demon Jigs located in Brisbane.
At first glance, plugs and jigs show a high level of quality. Hardware, design, and construction are first rate. I first tried the plugs by casting in the street outside my house, then dragging them across the blacktop during the retrieve. While you could see a few scratches here and there, the paint remained intact and the hooks stayed unbent.
Predatek sent three sizes of swimming plugs — the 6-inch Viper, the 3-inch Spoonbill, and a quirky little 2.5 rocket called the Jindivik (an aboriginal word meaning hunter). Through wired with sturdy treble hooks and clear plastic bills that add another inch to their overall lengths, the lures bear a slight resemblance to Bombers, but the action felt and looked more intense.
But it’s the coloring that jumps right out. In addition to the traditional green back/yellow belly, red head/white back, black back/silver belly color combos, there are hot pinks, neon purples, and various striped designs, all injection molded into a solid looking thermoplastic lure body.
According to the stat sheet, the Viper is designed to run at about 9 to 12 feet and comes with a rattle chamber that runs about three-quarters the length of the plug. Saltwater rattle lures haven’t yet had the kind of impact that their freshwater brethren inflicted on the largemouth bass scene, but these plugs may become pioneers. With a ball bearing running nearly 4 inches before it smacks against the other end of the lure, the sonic vibrations appear to carry well through the water, and that would be a distinct advantage in night fishing in rips.
The Spoonbill operates at around 16 feet or a bit deeper, depending on the speed of retrieval, and carries two sets of trebles.
The Jindivik travels a jittery, throbbing path through the water, the sound waves sending a loud message about its presence as it swims at varying depths, depending on the speed of the retrieve.
Although the design varies considerably among these lures, they have in common extremely "sticky" hooks. That is, they are sharp and penetrate easily. The Predatek hooks seemed to catch hold upon touch.
In addition to Predatek’s plugs, Demon Jigs (www.demonjigs.com) sent an assortment, including a 1-ounce sand eel. Green and gold wisps of reflective material in the skirt, a cluster of red at the neck, and a 3-inch tube-like body that, according to company president and owner Steve Badman, can be scented with menhaden oil or another attractant. The 1.5-ounce Lime Burner Jig and 2.5-ounce BlueWater Baitfish models are constructed with those fabric bodies. Then, there’s a 10-inch Black Eel Special — a jig/fly with a flexible, black hair body, sparsely laced with gold flashing, a bit of red Mylar clustered at the neck, and a 4/0 trailer hook along with one embedded in the jig head. Badman also sent a 2.25-ounce jig that glows in the depths and an 8-ounce jig and spoon combination suitable for deep water cod jigging.
It’s clear that the makers put time into the details. There isn’t a loose, frayed, or poorly knotted thread on any of the jigs, the paint lines cut in sharply where two colors meet and the paint job is hardened on with no peeling or flaking apparent.
I look carefully at these seemingly insignificant details because I know that if there are short cuts here there will be bigger faults showing up when I start fishing. I have a dozen or more cheap jigs in my tackle box with hooks that snapped when a big bass or tough blue chomped on them, jigs totally bare of paint after taking a couple of fish, bucktails that frayed and fell apart after a few casts, and one jig that split down the middle when it hit a boulder.
I put my 18-foot center console boat tight to the rocks and began casting. My sons, Jeremy and Mark, were quickly into fish and landed decent stripers. I tossed a Spoonbill into the same rip where they’d hooked up — one cast, one bass of about 25 inches.
For the next hour or so, I alternated among the Predatek plugs, and, with the exception of the Viper, matched or exceeded the number of fish my sons hooked up with in any given spot. The Viper reminds me of some of the larger plugs I use when I’m after bigger fish and I wanted to give it a side-by-side test with my Danny plugs, big Atoms, and Pikies.
Switching over to jigs, I started out with what I thought would be the hot item, the 1-ounce sand eel. I found that a simple, straight-line retrieve proved to be the best approach, and those small bass were all over the jig.
The Lime Burner, heavier by one-half ounce or more, cast like a missile, and I backed the boat off a bit to see its range. In the end, I decided I could cast a lot farther than any distance I’d be likely to be fishing away from the shoreline. The bass seemed to prefer the sand eel in the clearer water where we fished, but they hit aggressively on the larger lures in the rips.
Steve Badman suggested soaking the jigs in menhaden oil, but I wanted to test the jigs on their own. Simply put, they are as effective as any jigs I’ve fished.
If you believe, as I do, that fish can get used to seeing the same, old stuff dropping into the water, and just might turn on for something a little different, then these tough, good quality lures work. I can’t ask for more than that.
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