Casting lures: when to cast, what to throw and how to stay tight

Casting is probably the most versatile technique there is for barra. You can fish a lure slow, you can fish it deep, and you have far more control over the whole presentation than you do dragging something behind the boat. Done at the right time, on the right tide and with the right technique, it produces right through the year.

But it has its limits, and knowing them is half the skill.

When casting is the right call

Casting is at its best when the fish are bunched up. Barra holding near structure, sitting in a hole, or close enough that you can reach them within 30 or 40 metres of the boat, which is about as far as most of us can cast anyway. Put a lure in front of a fish in that situation and you have a good chance of a hit.

It gets less efficient when the fish are spread out over a big area, particularly once the water is deeper than about 3 or 4 metres. You can spend a lot of casts covering very little ground. That is when trolling is often the better option.

The places worth a cast

Most of the structure in our Finding Barra series is casting country:

• Creek mouths, especially as the run-out pushes bait out of the system
• Snags, where a short, accurate cast matters more than a long one
• Drop-offs, where shallow ground falls away into deeper water
• Deep holes, worked slowly near the bottom
• Rock bars, worked over the top and down the face

Soft plastics: the high-percentage play

On the big tides in Darwin Harbour and Bynoe Harbour, slow-rolling a soft plastic along the bottom is our go-to about 90 per cent of the time.

That is not because it is the most exciting way to fish. We love twitching and pausing hard bodies around the harbour when we are fishing for ourselves. But in a guiding situation, the slow-rolled plastic is a far higher return on the effort. A good paddle-tail or a 4-inch curly-tail mullet on a quality jig head is close to bomb-proof. Someone who has never picked up a rod before can catch a barra on it, as long as they can get it out there and wind it back slowly.

Hard bodies: the reaction strike

A hard body worked through likely water is a great way to draw an aggressive reaction strike, and when it comes it is something special. The catch is that you have to get the twitch right, and it is genuinely tricky for anyone who has not done it before.

It is learnable, though. With a bit of coaching on how to hold the rod, how to work the lure and how to set up for the strike, most people get the hang of it quickly. The barra twitch gets its own article in this series, and after that it is just time on the water.

Point the rod straight down the line

This is the single biggest thing you can do to convert more hits when you are slow-rolling, whether it is a plastic in the harbour or a big lure out of a coastal creek mouth on the run-off.

Point the rod tip dead straight down the line, with no bend in the rod, and just wind. When a fish hits, it comes up tight straight onto the drag. Instinct makes you wind and lift at the same time, so you are instantly connected.

Compare that with the other two options:

• Rod tip up: the weight of wet line puts a belly in it, and a standard fast-action rod has a lot of give in the tip. There is a lot of slack in the system before you actually come up tight on the fish.
• Rod tip down to the water: no belly, but the natural reaction to a strike is to lift, so you create a moment of slack before the line goes tight.

Think of it as loading the reel before you load the rod. The same trick is worth remembering for threadfin salmon on the flats, which have a habit of hitting a lure over and over without hooking up. Point the rod straight at them, reach your arms out a bit further than usual, and you have more room to pull back and take the give out of the system.

Set the drag before you cast

Because a straight rod has so little give in it, the drag setting matters more. Too tight and you can pull hooks in the first second or two. On a big run-off lure we will have it done up hard, on 50 lb braid and a 100 lb leader. In the harbour it is more like 15 or 20 lb braid and a 30 lb leader, with the drag set to match.

Set it as tight as you dare before you cast, and leave it. If anything, back it off during a fight. Tightening the drag halfway through a fight is about the quickest way we know to lose a good fish.

Reading the bank as you cast

One trip in Corroboree Billabong sums up how we pick casting water. On one bend there was a big weed bed on the far side, a clay point, then semi-floating weed, then overhanging freshwater mangroves, then the lily line. Transition central.

That spot was quiet on the day. Around the next corner, where the clay bank turned into the weed line and then the lilies, with access to five metres or more of deeper water, we found a heap of saratoga and barra sitting on the drop-off. We were punching weedless plastics right up the back into the cover and working them slowly out over the edge.

The lesson is the same as in our piece on transition areas. Do not just cast at the prettiest bank. Cast where the country changes and the deep water is close.

What to take from it

Cast when the fish are grouped up and within reach. Troll when they are spread out and deep. For most anglers on most tides, a slow-rolled soft plastic will catch more barra than anything else, and pointing the rod straight down the line will hook more of the fish that hit it.