Barra-style stingers for plastics

Well aware that there had been good numbers (in good sizes) of tailor getting around at Woody Head lately - not to mention mackerel - I had a quick discussion on the notion of fishing plastics for such species with my local tackle shop owner Paul. Whilst I'm a big fan of kayak fishing with soft plastics and particularly fond of paddle-tail variations for multi-tasking, such lures don't usually last long in the vicinity of choppers, their larger greenback counterparts as well as the more illustrious mackerel species. Having tails bitten clean off is often more common than managing a hook up and it's expensive, time consuming and frustrating. 

Sure... one could just use hard-body style lures but in this writers opinion, the plastics will often outfish them and are a little more versatile. So the discussion I had with Paul centred around how to minimise the frustration and his suggestion was to take a lesson from the book of barra fishoes: incorporate a stinger hook. H wrote a few notes on one such jighead design recently and after putting it to the test, came through with a positive result. My experience with Paul's suggested stinger concept was much the same.

He gave me a demonstration on how to rig up a simple stinger using a ReactionStrike hollowbody style lure, which I've been having success with lately. The hollowbody concept is perfect for this particular jig. The idea is to first line up the jighead and mark where the hook will protrude. Then on the underside of the lure, create another mark where the stinger is to be inserted (about 5 - 6mm further back towards the tail). Then you take a treble hook, push it into the body where the 2nd mark was made. Then add the jighead as normal. But the trick is to feed the hook through the eyelet of the treble as you do this. Once done, you will have a single barb poking through the top of the shad as normal, and at least 2 barbs of the treble protruding on the underside, a little further back.

Obviously the point of the exercise is to achieve a hook up where a tail-chomping toothy would otherwise get a free plastic tail for lunch. And it works to. If not for the extra stinger hook incorporated into the lure pictured above, this fish would have escaped and my lure destroyed. Well, the lure was still destroyed in the end but at least I caught the fish and when it comes to plastic lures, thats a compromise I'm willing to make.

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