X-Rap Barramundi

While preparing for a day out on the saltwater Causeway Lake, I packed a selection of Rapala lures including the X-Rap shads and slashbait minnows. I kayaked out to a fairly quiet mangrove system where I began casting my lures as close into the snags as possible. I started with a 10cm Saltwater X-Rap slashbait in a natural dark brown colour. I began with a standard retrieve but then resulted to a seductive twitching retrieve. The water was very muddy and the lure seemed to disappear as soon as it hit the water. With this in mind, I decided to switch to my 6cm X-Rap shad in the fire tiger pattern. This lure has a large bib which allows it to get right down into the deeper areas and occasionally hit the bottom giving a puff of sand through the water which can attract predators. As I was using the twitch retrieve I saw a barra hit a group of small herring just off the surface right amongst the snags. I quickly changed to a smaller X-Rap slashbait in the silver blue colour to help resemble the herring. Not only is the colour and size similar to a herring but when I swam it beside my kayak it became obvious that the herring cold be seen easily in the murky water due to their light shiny colour.



My first cast landed in a sandy bank area rimed with mangrove roots. The lure was twitched and worked all of the way back to kayak with no hits. My second cast landed right up close to the mangrove trees and was twitched and paused. Just after the second twitch, a nice size fish ate the lure and started to run off along the mangrove encrusted banks. The drag of my Flame F-30 Okuma reel was adjusted to help turn the fish around and get him into the open water away from the snags. As he stubbornly came closer to my kayak I could see he was a nice sized barramundi and he was neatly hooked right in the corner of the mouth, with the tail treble. He had to slowly tire him out before I could pull him onto my kayak. He measured to be 59cm and was quickly and safely released after the picture was taken.



The barramundi before being landed



The 59cm Barramundi

   



I continued casting the little lure around into the snags, twitching and pausing it to help produce a strike. Shortly after I got another hit from a more energetic barramundi which jumped out off the water twice before spitting the hooks. I had to cut off and replace my fluorocarbon leader line because it had been extremely worn and shredded from the aggressive hit. With in no time I hooked up on another barramundi which behaved similar to the one I had landed earlier. This one though measured 56cm and was just smaller than the other. With in 5 minutes a third barramundi was then landed measuring 49cm.

 


My lovely X-Rap, Okuma Rod and Barra



Tha smaller 49cm barramundi











 

This shows how effective matching a lure to the natural food can be and how well it can pay of it you do so. Sometimes though if fish are shut down and not feeding brighter more ‘out there’ colours like a fire tiger colour or a clown colour can be used to help produce more bites.



56cm barramundi