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Custom ZMan ShrimpZ
Custom ZMan ShrimpZ
By Will Lee
I grew up bait fishing with my father. We'd put as much time and effort into collecting bait as we would actually put into fishing and the rewards for having good fresh bait were normally outstanding. One of our favourite baits for just about anything that swims is a live prawn. I remember fishing competitions where we'd target the heaviest whiting and we'd curse bream after bream as they stole our hard worked for prawns. Bream just love prawns!
Since getting the bream on lures bug in the late 90s I've always looked for lures and soft plastics that look like a live prawn in the water. The team at TT Lures have released a dead ringer, the ZMan 3" Scented ShrimpZ. The ZMan lure range has a 10X Tough ElaZtech construction for extreme durability. Unlike traditional soft plastic baits these lures are nearly indestructible and I've caught up to twenty fish on the one ShrimpZ. Add to this the natural scent that these baits are impregnated with and you've got a lure ready to be fished hard!
It was the weekend before the Gamakatsu Team Series Bribie event and my team mate Dicko and I were fishing Redcliffe Peninsula, looking for areas that might possibly hold a tournament winning bag of fish. The Peninsula gets a good flogging by bream enthusiasts these days, so I tend to opt for a different lure than what most anglers throw, especially if it's bigger fish I'm looking for. I knew this would be a perfect time to try the ShrimpZ.
Dicko stuck to the run of the mill crankbait patterns and was catching plenty of legal fish but the fish were small. I kept plugging away with the ShrimpZ getting plenty of hits but coming up short. I decided to cut the bait down to see if it made a difference.
It wasn't long before I put the ShrimpZ in front of a hungry bream that slammed the lure and we boated a fish of about 800 grams. A fish that we'd be more than happy with on tournament day. A few minutes later, fishing the same ShrimpZ, I felt a solid bump and drove the hooks into a snodger bream. After a short but hard fight we had a fish in the net that would have weighed at least 1.2kg. We were onto something!
The Saturday before the tournament we decided to fish Pumicestone Passage, just in case the weather turned bad on the Sunday, so we would at least have a plan B. We tried the ShrimpZ around weed beds, rock bars, moored boats and pontoons. It didn't seem to matter where we threw the ShrimpZ, they'd catch fish.
The ElaZtech material that these baits are made from is quite buoyant which makes them deadly around pontoons. They skip cast perfectly and rigged with a 1/16oz TT jighead, they have a slow fall that bream can't resist!
The weather on tournament day did turn out to be average, so we decided against going to Redcliffe in the small boat we were fishing from. Instead we stuck close to the start line and caught over a dozen legal fish for the session, the majority on the ShrimpZ! This was good enough to land us in the top 10.
There are that many of ways to rig the ZMan ShrimpZ that even Bubba Gump wouldn't be disappointed! In the time I've been playing with these baits the most successful method I've found is to cut the head off about 1cm in front of the legs. I then rig the bait on a size 1 TT Lures HeadlockZ Finesse?jighead. I've used the ShrimpZ successfully on 1/20, 1/16, 1/12 and 1/8oz heads depending on the depth of water I'm fishing.
These baits are heavily scented and one of the first things I noticed with this bait is the amount of times a fish will come back to eat the bait if it doesn't hook up at first. To take advantage of this, I have started using TT HeadlockZ jigheads to help hold ShrimpZ to the jig head and stop the fish from pulling the ShrimpZ down the shank of the hook. If the fish are timid, you can try using a stinger to the back of the bait. To do this use a size 12 treble and attach it to the eye of the jig head with a short length of 10lb braid. You want to allow enough line that you can stick the treble into the tail of the ShrimpZ. This is a deadly technique when the majority of fish are small.
The retrieve I tend to use with the ShrimpZ is very simple. Once the lure reaches the desired depth I want to fish, I hold the rod tip high and wind real slow. Every six to eight turns of the reel handle I give the lure a small hop by raising the rod tip and then continue to slow roll the ShrimpZ.
Don't just take my word for it; grab a packet of ShrimpZ, a couple of different weight TT jigheads and get out on the water. You won't be disappointed!