Rapala Ultralight Series

Author: JayPenfold

Category: Kayak fishing tackle

Created on Wednesday, 09 November 2011 12:30

Written by Jay Penfold

I'm a little bit excited about a couple of new lures added to the collection lately. A couple of new ultralight Rapala's: an Ultralight Profile Minnow (ULM-6) and a deeper diving Ultralight Profile Shad (ULS-4). I've been introducing some bigger lures into the tacklebox lately which have been superb when the action is on. Lateley the bite has been somewhat light on, and possibly smaller offerings are what's needed to match the hatch or entice a bite. The system I fish sees just about everything smash a 3" profile of some sort, so these new fish lollies look the goods. It's early days yet, first session out testing was biteless, a tiny bream aside, but the river test was promising, gauging castability and trollability.Armed with some 4lb string on the Nitro Ultrabream Finesse I put these lures through their paces, trolled at varying speeds, cast and retrieved and put through the wringer of possibilites. So far, I have to say I'm very impressed. 

6cm Profile minnow: casts like a bullet, sinks at a decent rate, has an action like a fleeing, erratic baitfish. Dives between 60cm and 90cm, it's fishable like one would a lightly weighted soft plastic but it darts around as if being chased by some bad natured trevalley type fish (my intended target on this fish lolly). I think flats and drop off fishing for trevs is going to be deadly with this lure, bring on Summer so I can put it to the test. No self respecting flathead would pass this one up either and dawn bream should positively smash it. Bring on the manic panic retrieve and see what happens!

4cm Ultralight Profile Shad: also casts like a bullet. It dives 1.2 to 1.5 meters so fills the big gap in my arsenal from the sub/surface toys to the 2.3m diving Xrap Shads I'm loving so much. It sinks well, has a nice tight baitfish shimmy type action and trolls really well. Handles a quick retrieve as much as it does a dead slow roll and it's built like a brick outhouse. I can forecast even a wary Jack nailing this one on the drop. Sadly, over the week I have been testing this little fishie out was a quiet one. The small Flathead, Big Eye Trevalley and Bream have all taken a shine to it. 

Both these lures I suspect are going to account for a lot of my light tackle Summer hardbody fishing, I simply can't wait for the estuary to warm and start taking some far more challenging fish on them.