Soft Baits - a deadly colour combo

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Is it just me, or is yellow-brown becoming the new Nuclear Chicken/New Penny? I’ve always carried far more soft-plastics in all sorts of colours and shapes than I could ever use – just in case. But until recently my default settings were reasonably simple: I’d begin sessions with soft-baits in various natural browny hues or, at the other end of the spectrum, with a crazily coloured Gulp! ‘Nuclear Chicken’. Between the two, dinner was usually served.

The first choice makes plenty of sense: the brown ‘New Penny’ colour roughly represents squid, a favoured prey of snapper, yet also appeals to those fish feeding on worms and shellfish on the bottom, even though neither of the latter food items looks anything like those soft-baits. Consequently, I suspect we have what’s called a ‘super stimulator’, with the lure incorporating various triggers that get fish excited and/or hungry, making it particularly hard to resist. Possibly the light-brown colour suggests shellfish meat, which, when combined with the lure’s attractive scent, softness and tantalising movement, makes it a winner.

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The reason for the success of Nuclear Chickens is harder to pinpoint. Initially I light-heartedly theorised that fish were so outraged by this abomination they just wanted to bite and kill it! But now I believe it’s because these lures really stand out, due to a combination of high-contrast fluorescent and luminescent colours. This makes them highly visible on the drop following the cast, as well as while trundling/jiggling along on the bottom, attracting nearby fish in for a closer look. Next, they decide whether to eat the lure or chase it off with a decent nip, with both courses of action potentially leading to a hook-up.

In between these two favourites, various baitfish-coloured hues have also proven effective, particularly over the ‘baitfish schooling’ months (or when used in response to my buddy John Eichelsheim doing well with them, which he often does).

Pink-white can be a bolter at times, too, which is not a huge surprise, since it was a favourite colour combination with jig fishers prior to soft-baits coming along.

However, over the years I’ve noticed that soft-baits offering quite a bit of yellow are increasingly featuring in the faces of good snapper. I’m specifically alluding to the Gulp! ‘Satay Chicken’ (bright yellow-brown) and ‘Curried Chicken’ (bright yellow-red), with the latter in the 7-inch Jerk Shad model impressing on innumerable occasions. It’s therefore become my go-to lure when targeting big snapper in waters up to 25 metres deep (the big 6.5 Nemesis in those same colours has been fantastic, too).

Having said that though, I can’t help wondering if the ‘Satay Chicken’ in 7-inch could have been even more effective, as I simply LOVE this colour combo! It’s been producing fish of all sizes year-round, year after year, in the shallows and out deep, whether cast and retrieved or dragged.

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And not just the Gulp! version. As I regularly fish reefy, weedy areas terrorised by armies of soft-bait wrecking wrasse and squid, the more durable Z-Man in the equivalent colour of ‘Bruised Banana’ is a favourite. Sure, this product loses much of its fishy-smelling qualities after 15-20 minutes of use, but that’s what the various fish-attracting coatings are for. Just spray, soak or squirt some Secret Sauce, Trigger X or Halco Catch onto/inside the lure and you’re back to hauling in the fish again.

Indeed, such has been the Bruised Banana’s irresistible march to success on virtually every trip, I struggle to put anything else on my line. Consequently, my trip reports are sounding a bit like a stuck record. The doubters among you might now be thinking: “Well, Mark, if you don’t put anything else on the end, of course a Bruised Banana is going to work best for you!”

While I can appreciate this sentiment, on many occasions I’ve snapped lures off for various reasons and re-rigged with a different colour soft-plastic, but have rarely enjoyed the same degree of success afterwards. And the snapper I did catch were generally smaller, too.

A recent outing provided a great example of the lure’s capabilities. After launching my little Stabi’ from Takapuna boat ramp, I headed out past Rangitoto Lighthouse to the Boulder Bay area, which had been fishing well in previous weeks.

Sure enough, huge schools of baitfish showed on my Raymarine sounder’s screen, but first I wanted to check out the action in the shallows. So after idling right in close to some really gnarly looking territory with patches of kelp lazily undulating next to dark blue-green gutters and holes, out went the first cast. Since it was so shallow, I closed the reel’s bail-arm and began the retrieve immediately, completing perhaps three handle turns before a boil on the surface and hard jolt indicated I was on.

For those unfamiliar with shallow-water lure fishing, such strikes are often assumed to be kahawai, especially when they zig-zag off at high speed near the surface, sometimes breaking the water as they do so. But that’s also how snapper can behave in such situations. So, after surviving the first powerful run, I wasn’t surprised to slowly work a dark-bronze kelpie snapper into my net. At 3.5 kilos, it wasn’t a monster, but it was a damn good start.

Out I cast again, but this time things went unpleasantly solid right away. Bugger. Snagged. Unwilling to go in closer and risk spooking any fish residing in this great looking territory, I decided to bust off and re-rig. Done.

Now, where had I put my tackle bag? … WHERE IS MY TACKLE BAG?! AAAAGGGHHH! I’d left it in my car back at the ramp!

So there I was, the day but a pup, with just two jig-heads of different weights attached to my other outfits, along with one soft-bait – a ‘preloved’ 5-inch Bruised Banana (of course)!

So it was goodbye to the risky shallows fishing and out a bit deeper over the sand to where I’d marked the big baitfish schools and their attendant predators on the way out.

What a session it turned out to be! Casting and dragging techniques both proved effective, resulting in a regularly bending rod and plenty of nice fish in the boat. Most were snapper, but several broad-shouldered kahawai kept me well occupied for longer than I would have liked, and one nice trevally would make my sushi-loving daughter Zoe very happy later on.

In between the frantic periods of activity I retied joining knots and nervously checked my steadily deteriorating soft-bait, which at times got dragged right down around the hook bend before being rescued and repositioned.

Nor did I like the look of the shredded rubber hanging off near the tail, but figured it probably provided more movement. The fish certainly seemed to agree, with the final encounter providing the perfect finale.

I’d already cast and retrieved the lure mostly back to the boat, before slowing to let the soft-bait swing around behind the stern. One jiggling lift was followed by a drop, and despite the momentarily slack line created, the heavy thump of a hard bite still registered. A quick strike saw my rod buckled hard over, followed by several hard head shakes, then a whistling run. Even when fishing by yourself, you’re allowed to give a whoop, so I did.

A couple of minutes later I was the victor. While hardly anything special at 4.5 kilos, that silvery-pink snapper topped off a truly wonderful session – a session that probably shouldn’t have happened at all. It also saw my one-and-only Bruised (and very battered) Banana amazingly survive right through to the end – just! It was time to go home.

So why does this colour combination work so well? Again, I’m not really sure, but believe it

borrows the best features of both the Nuclear Chicken and New Penny colourations, offering fish a highly visible meal (the yellow really stands out, especially in murky water) that also possesses tasty brownish bits to entice those fish snuffling around the seabed after shellfish, crabs and sea worms.

What a winner! Why would you need anything else? (So soft-bait distributors, how about some more size and shape options in the yellow-brown colours?) However, I won’t stop lugging my tackle bag filled with dozens of other soft-plastics just yet…

Update

Typical. Since writing this article two months ago, there were several weeks when ‘Redbone’ – a squiddy/baitfish colour – really smoked Bruised Banana in the shallows (two to six metres). Even worse, another colour combo called ‘Motor Oil’ was slaying them out deeper. So, as suggested earlier, keep a reasonable selection with you, just in case!

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