Fishing the Snags

Shortly after my mates and I planned a last minute fishing trip to our local Fitzroy River in Rockhampton, we headed down to Barra Jacks, a nearby tackle store. As the store didn’t have in stock any of the Floating Rapala X-Rap 10 lures I resulted to one of the new Storm lures to the store. This lure being the Storm Thunder Barra. This lure is 11cm long, dives to 2 meters, weighs 21.5 grams and has a positive buoyancy which is great for casting into those snaggy and hard to reach areas. The two lures I bought were the olive scale and the pop eye coloured Thunder Barra’s.



The Storm Thunder Barra Lures

 We then headed down to my mates favourite spot at the river where we threw our lures over the rocky structure. The water surrounding the spot is full of rocky holes which can be challenging to fish without the use of floating lures.

The rocky structure at our river

Within the first three casts of the Pop Eye coloured lure I was hooked up on the first fish of the day. Even though the standard wind in retrieve can produce bites, a strong twitch retrieve with many pauses can cause the barra to stir into a feeding frenzy and smash your lure as it darts past. The fish stood no chance against my Okuma V-System baitcaster reel and Okuma Graphite Travel rod combo as it shot through the water.



My Okuma V-System 200a reel and Okuma Graphite Travel rod

In no time it was landed and safely held by my Okuma Lip Grips. The fish was tagged and released after a few quick pictures.

Another tagged barramundi

As the day progressed I switched to my suspending Rapala X-Rap 10 lures in the hope that they could entice the barra from their rocky holes. I now regret it today as suspending lures tend to be less snag resistant, unlike the more buoyant floating lures. With this in mind I hope that other keen anglers learn from this and stick to floating lures while fishing the snags. I also recommend any extreme barramundi fishermen to go get a few Storm Thunder Barra lures for your tackle box, as it just might be the difference between catching nothing or that fish of a lifetime.