Glowbite Lightning Rod Jigs

The Glowbite story is by now a well-known and interesting one.

Glowbite creator Wes Braddock was intrigued with the flashing light in a child’s toy and thought it might work well in a lure.

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Filming identical lures underwater, one with a light, and one without, has shown that fish will strike at the lure with a light up to three times more than the lure without. These phenomenal results convinced Wes to launch Glowbite and make this technology available for everyone.

Consequently, he has developed and patented a series of jigheads, kabura slider-style lures, ‘disco’ clips and now jigs incorporating a water-activated light.

The latest addition to the Glowbite range is Lightning Rods, a series of deep-water jigs designed primarily for targeting species such as hapuku, bluenose, bass and kingfish, but seem to attract everything else as well!

Getting out on the water to put the Lightning Rods through their paces offshore has been something of a mission, given the weather these last few months keeping the NZFN team tucked close to home.

I have had the opportunity to fish the jigs on two occasions and both times they turned up some surprises. The first came over an area of deep foul (60m) with kingfish on the sounder, the Accufish mode on the Furuno indicating these were mainly undersized ‘rats and it proved accurate. I did catch a couple of smaller fish, but they didn’t trouble the scorer’ to use a cricketing analogy. I moved away once the razor gang took over the neighbourhood, but it had proven to me the effectiveness of the lures. They do catch fish!

The second time we were a little closer in, targeting a variety of species over a pin off Bream Head which is favoured by kingfish jigging aficionados.

Mechanical jigging for kingfish is not something I am good at, or enjoy particularly, so a younger member of the crew, James Gibbons, took up the tackle – an Okuma Metalloid rod-Makaira Special edition jig reel combo – and put the lures through their paces.

On just his second drop James hooked up into a respectable fish, only to have the hook pull as he worked the kingfish towards the surface. Bugger – there goes our photo opportunity!

He had several other strikes but failed to hook up. About to give up, he made one last drop and was rewarded not with the target species, but a nice snapper. It had nailed the 180g pink jig no problems, producing a welcome addition to the IceyTek on what had been a slow start to the day.

Lightning Rod lures incorporate a unique concave and tail-weighed design that creates an enticing darting movement as they either drop or are retrieved through the water column. The lights flash through a red/white/green pattern about 180 revolutions per minute and the battery will last for a minimum of 50 hours – that is a lot of jigging!

The jigs are rigged using quality Owner assist hooks, Owner split rings and 120kg Kevlar cord.

The lures do need a little looking after. It pays to dry them well once you have finished your jigging session to prevent the light continuing to flash. The light is activated when the saltwater conducts a current between two anodes.

If the light fails to work, just scrape the anodes with a knife or a bit of sandpaper to put the flash back into your fishing.

   This article is reproduced with permission of   
New Zealand Fishing News

December 2019 - Grant Dixon
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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