If you were to ask me what I thought the most temperamental, tenacious species to chase was, I would without a doubt tell you impoundment barramundi! While our conversations on the long road trips north to the barra dams take many turns, they always end up on focused on the moodiness of these fish and what lures we think will tempt them this time around. To add fuel to fire, these fish see a lot of angling pressure. The rabbit is well and truly out of the hat when it comes to targeting trophy barramundi in our northern impoundments, and the fish have certainly wised up over the years. I’d wager these fish have seen just about every rattling, vibrating, gliding and popping lure on the market today.

So, when the opportunity presented itself to test out the new Berkley Shimma Pro-Rigs on these fussy fish in Northern Queensland’s Lake Awoonga, I couldn’t think of a better focus group to do so. To things even more interesting, we arrived at the dam to a brisk southern easterly, typically shutting these fish down and making them harder to tempt. Talk about a trial by fire!

A big fan of anything black and gold for impoundment barra, I opted to cast around the Gold Chartreuse in the 6.5-inch model, noting that the line-up also had a 4.5- and 5.5-inch model should I need. Straight out of the packet and I was already impressed with the lifelike, tough TPE body and the great thumping paddle tail. The componentry on the lure screamed quality, from the well exposed super strong single hook, Owner STX treble, Hyperwire split rings and hidden weighting system.

Testing the Shimma Pro-Rig boat side got me even more excited when I saw just how much the body rolled and that big paddle tail kicked with so little speed. Movement at slow speeds is vital to success on these impoundments, and I could tell we were onto a winner here. Over the following few days, we focused on slow rolling our lures past fish we’d marked deep on structure, a strategy which saw us land three fish close to the magic metre mark. During the obligatory boat ramp chat with other fishos over the course of our stay, we learnt that our fish were the only three to be caught by casting the entire time. If that’s not a testament to the Shimma Pro-Rig I don’t know what is! Lure fishing is all about confidence and these new Shimma Pro-Rigs certainly give me that. I’m looking forward to giving them further tests on the likes of mulloway and Murray cod. Watch this space!

By Michael Guest – Berkley Pro Team