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FISHING STICKING IT TO THE TROPICS BY CAPTAIN ASPARAGUS M id-winter, don't you just love it? Following my instincts for warmth, idleness and ease, I have again abandoned our clammy climes for pretty much all of June, and popped back to my little slice o' paradise in the Solomons. This time however I did so On A Mission! It sounds so much better when you capitalise that, eh. There has been a lot of talk in fishing circles lately about various surface casting lures coming on to the market. These have been performing very well indeed here for kingfish, not surprisingly, and the internet is full of reports of these lures, called Stickbaits, simply slaying fish all over the place. The first ones to hit good old Kiwiland were for sale at horrendous prices, and anyone who thinks $300 for one easy-to- bite-off lure is a reasonable (or even sane) price frankly needs their head read. Well, that's what I think. However, as time goes by and the exotica start to pale, more reasonably priced lures, in my opinion every bit as effective, have come on line and are now widely available in most decent fishing shops. Being a cheap bugger myself, and also well aware of my own shortcomings in knot-tying and rock-avoiding skills, I must say I like lures that don't cause cardiac arrests if you lose one. So it was that I headed to that pleasant northern nirvana with a box full of some of the more recent additions to New Zealand's range of Stickbaits. I had with me, from Gourocks, a range of their River-to-Sea (R2C) surface lures, Doggies, Rovers and Wide-glides, and a couple of new Starwalker lures from the Zest/Gamakatsu man, Chris Wong. These all look very sexy, and I can tell you I was determined to give them a thorough thrashing on this trip. I had used the Doggies up there before, on my last trip in July 2009 in fact, but not for long and not with absolute confidence. I just couldn't seem to get the darned things to work as they were This Tille trevally nailed the R2C Doggie on the first day, boosting my confidence in these lures supposed to. Despite limited success, they were soon sidelined in favour of my sure-fire comfort zone lure, Yo-zuri Surface bull poppers. This time I was going to leave the poppers alone and make the darn Stickbaits work for me. In order to experiment with the lures to see exactly how best to use them, on my second day at the Zipolo Habu Resort (when you have as much gear packed away as I have up there, it takes a full day just to unpack everything!) I wombled down to the jetty to have a flick around and experiment. It was perfect for this, as the lagoon was dead flat calm and so super-clear, even at full cast distance, I could see the lure easily. It was almost like it was suspended in air. On my first cast, trying the approved normal Stickbait retrieve of the big sweep with the rod tip, and several quick winds to recover the slack, the lure just spiralled in uselessly – most discouraging. So, on my next cast I went for an ultra-slow action instead, just slowly sweeping the rod-tip about a metre or so, and a moderately slow crank or two on the reel to keep in touch with the lure The action of the Doggie was transformed. No longer a spiralling, ungainly creation, now it was a rolling, darting little wounded-fish wannabe lure, I was truly impressed. To my enormous delight, half way back to the jetty, only some 50m or so out, a silvery something barrelled out of the deeper water and engulfed the lure. Holy crap! Catching a big fish on a lure off the jetty here, where the fish have all been thoroughly educated in lure-identification over the years, was a huge surprise, for me and the fish, I guess. Skilfully battling the beastie, I soon had a very nice 6kg Tille trevally on the jetty. The fact that it swam pretty much straight in to escape a shark hot on its tail helped, I must confess. This was the first time I had caught one of this species (I had to look it up), and it was a great way to instil a little confidence in these lures, I can tell you. The next R2C lure I was very keen to try out was the Wide-glide. Although I was hugely underwhelmed with the colour range at the time, (Just wait until you see the new colours though. Wow!) I really did have to give them a shot. I found these lures, although also fairly slow-working, have a much more exaggerated swimming action to them, remain nicely stable at slightly higher speeds than the Doggies, and so can be used very nicely with a slightly longer sweep of the rod. As you begin your sweep, the lure ducks down a foot or so and darts forward, veering side-to-side. As you slow down and stop the rod sweep, the nose pops up and when given slack line, the lure swoops off to one side. It looks very tasty indeed and proved to be very effective as well. The last R2C lure I had up there was the Rover. This is a long Stickbait/popper-cross affair, and to be honest, it really did not ring my bells at all. I was a couple of weeks into my trip before I finally, grudgingly, decided to give the lure a shot. I found this lure worked best when retrieved with moderate rod tip action, while winding steadily, sort of like a popper, really. This gave the lure some nice, splashing action, always a good idea for surface lures I think, and the wiggle of the rod tip made the lure zigzag erratically across the water. The red bass nailed the Stickbaits enthusiastically. This one loved the look of this Starwalker floating Stickbait This koheru Starwalker only had the chance to catch this one small giant trevally before the next fish stole it permanently! 50 Professional Skipper September/October 2011 "Hmm," I thought, "this looks actually pretty interWOOWWW!" as this lure too was nailed from below. Okay, so it worked, too! The R2C lures certainly did the job for me - very pleasing. I also had to give the Starwalker lures a crack. These lures are