A question I am often asked is how to select the best fishing lures to take travelling.
In order to address the question, I enlisted the help of lure manufacturing royalty here in Australia, Dave Killalea from Old Dog Lures.
The first thing to think about when deciding on the best fishing lures to take to northern Australia is to match the hatch.
By that I mean, if the fish are feeding on big mullet, you’ll need a big lure.
If the fish are feeding on jelly prawn, you’ll need a small lure.
So you’ll need to get familiar with the kind of bait fish your target species are likely to be feeding on.
Secondly you’ll need to match the depth the fish are holding up.
There’s no point throwing a lure that runs to 18 feet at fish holding in 2 feet.
These days with the sounding equipment available (I’m currently using a Garmin 95sv CHIRP), it’s relatively easy to determine where in the water column they are.
If your fish are hanging in the snags, you may want to try a sinking lure that will drop straight down.
A lure that floats tail down can be skipped along the surface like a pop eye mullet.
And a lure that floats bib down can be positioned in front of deeper fish quickly as it will dive more easily.
Another thing to consider is the hardware.
Don’t even bother heading to northern Australia without using good Aussie lures with serious 6x strong hooks.
I chat with Dave in the video below about these and some other considerations when selecting the best fishing lures to take when heading north.
Additional Links
In the video we use some of Dave’s Old Dog Lures as examples, and if you’d like to know more you can check them out on his website;
I also talk about upgrading your lure hardware in a previous post which you can watch here;
Confused about traditional vs CHIRP sounding technology?
How CHIRP works is explained here with some neat sounder shots.
And a few more of my barra fishing tips for those heading north can be found here;
Best Barramundi Lures & Where to Use Them
And if you’d like a cheat sheet of the lures (and rigs and tackle) for catching barramundi and other tropical sports fish mentioned in the video, click this button and to order a free copy of the cheat sheet to take to your local tackle shop.
As always we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences so please feel free to comment below.
more great free tips
