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Mulloway Favourite - ZMan 6 Inch SwimmerZ
By Cameron Cronin
As much as I eagerly await any new additions to the ZMan range, there will always be those old favourites that have stood up to the test of time and continue to produce some great fish. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is essential to learn how to catch fish on a wide range of presentations, but I think we all have those lures that tend to find their way onto the end of our leader more frequently, and it’s often tricky not to pick out a few personal favourites.
For myself, chasing primarily mulloway as a year-round target, I find the warmer months are a time where anglers can often find themselves fishing in a wider variety of situations, from casting lures off surf beaches and headlands, to spinning the back of rivers. The fish are widely dispersed and with that you’d think a wide range of techniques and lures would be required to make the most of each different fishing scenario. In recent times however, I have found myself increasingly going back to one old favourite time and time again, to the point where I am struggling to find reason to remove it from my line. Brainstorming for this article, I then realised that I had yet to write about this lure specifically, despite it being a part of the original ZMan range! So, without further ado, I’d like to spend some time discussing my all-time favourite soft plastic, the ZMan 6” SwimmerZ.
For those not well acquainted, the 6” SwimmerZ is a baitfish profile soft plastic, featuring a thin, teardrop shaped paddle tail and narrow tail wrist, designed for maximum action at slow speeds. At the business end, the lure tapers up to a larger head section, which closely resembles a mullet, a species that is always high on the target list for any larger predator. Also featured is a slit belly for weedless rigging and scent retention, along with moulded in eyes and scale texture.
At a glance, it’s certainly an attractive lure, with plenty of runs on the board, but you might ask what makes it so good when compared to everything else on the market. For me, that can be summarised by one word. Versatility. The attributes this lure has certainly makes it a jack of all trades and in this article, I’ll touch on a handful of situations where I like to use this lure and why it works so well in each of those.
The place where I think the SwimmerZ arguably shines the most is the rocks. It accounted for my first mulloway off the rocks back in 2013 and since then it has claimed a stack of fish and remained the top pick for most scenarios. For me, rock fishing for mulloway involves pulling hard on heavy gear amongst structure, first and foremost. For this application, I rarely drop below a TT lures 8/0 HeadlockZ HD jighead, which is near impossible to bend or straighten on a fish, while providing sufficient gape to encircle the jawbone of even the largest mulloway. This ensures that fish aren’t easily able shake the hook, when thrashing about in the wash.
The 6” SwimmerZ pairs perfectly with this hook size, leaving plenty of exposure to help ensure a solid hook set. When rock fishing, it is also common to encounter mulloway schools containing both small and very large fish in the same location. I have found this lure to be perfectly sized to appeal to any fish that you are likely to encounter. I won’t go into too much detail regarding this type of fishing as I have previously covered it here (https://tackletactics.com.au/Tips-Techniques/Beach-Rock-Land-Based) in my ‘Mulloway off the Rocks’ article, so feel free to go back and have a read if you are interested in finding out more.
In recent times I have spent many hours working on fishing for mulloway off the beach on lures. In these sessions I have rotated through countless different presentations, but over time have found it very difficult to remove the ever-reliable SwimmerZ from my outfit. Given the lack of structure on the beach, my favourite outfit consists of 30lb braid and 60lb Platypus Hard Armour Leader. This allows me to punch out long, searching casts, while providing enough grunt to knock over a stubborn fish slugging it out in the shore dump.
With this combo, I find a 1oz 8/0 TT HeadlockZ to be the ideal jighead for the 6” SwimmerZ. This presentation is reasonably small and compact, compared to many popular pre-rigged lures used by beach anglers, making it not only very easy to cast, but also extremely aerodynamic. This attribute is virtually essential when punching casts into the ever-present onshore winds that we receive on the east coast throughout the summer months.
Once the lure hits the water, it’s narrow shoulders offer very little water resistance, allowing it to cut through the turbulent white wash on the surface and hold depth on a slow and steady wind, which tends to be the most productive retrieve for mulloway in the beach gutters. Once hooked up to a fish, the small size and light weight of this lure makes it extremely easy for a mulloway to inhale, producing solid hook sets that rarely result in pulled hooks, even during prolonged fights with the larger fish that frequent our coastal beaches.
Finally, river fishing offers varied methods for targeting mulloway and I often spend both days and nights on my local rivers during the warmer months. Without the restricting factors of heavy tackle and large swell, a much wider array of lures can be used in our rivers than the other locations mentioned previously. However, the ZMan 6” SwimmerZ has always continued to be a popular lure. Due to the faster sink rate mentioned earlier, I like to use the lure during the day on steep rock walls with current, where it works extremely well with jighead weights from 1oz, all the way down to 1/4oz as required.
I will often still use 30lb braid when needed, however when dropping back to 20lb or 10lb braid, consider using the thinner gauge 6/0 or 7/0 TT HeadlockZ HD jighead for increased hook penetration on lighter lines, when compared to the 8/0 size. I find this lure a particular standout when searching for the larger, metre plus class fish in the river, although rest assured, smaller mulloway will still aggressively nail the this lure without a second thought.
At night, whist I admittedly spend a lot of time throwing larger lures about these days, when all else fails the SwimmerZ will often be the first thing that I reach for. It’s big enough to get noticed in the dark, yet small enough to appeal to any fish in the area and I have had several sessions of late, where changing to a SwimmerZ has produced an immediate bite after thoroughly covering the area with other lures.
So, there you have it, a quick summary of why I love fishing the ZMan 6” Swimmerz for mulloway. Regardless of how you like to fish, I reckon you’d struggle to go wrong fishing a SwimmerZ for both mulloway and any other large predator for that matter. If you’re still reading at this point and I haven’t convinced you to grab a pack or three to try, I don’t know what will! 😉
Cheers,
Cam