Australian tackle brand Tackle Tactics TV has used a morning session on South East Queensland's Baroon Pocket Dam to build a complete how-to around one soft plastic — the ZMan SlimSwimZ — paired with the new 3/8oz Demonz jig head, with presenters Declan and Justin grinding Aussie bass out of a school that kept shutting down.
The session opens fast. Declan lands "a cracking bass" on a 2.5-inch SlimSwimZ threaded onto the 3/8oz Demonz jig head. Justin follows with another on a 3-inch SlimSwimZ in Gold Rush on the same jig head fitted with a size-2 jig spinner. "If I could only have one plastic in my kit to catch a bass, yeah, that SlimSwimZ would be the one — two and a half or that 3-inch," Justin says, before the pair commit to fishing nothing else for the rest of the morning.
The retrieve they land on is a dead-slow roll across the bottom. "I was just absolutely dead-slow-rolling that little SlimSwimZ through there — would have been going past a bunch of different fish's heads and one has eventually clunked it," Declan says after his third Baroon Pocket bass. Once the visible school on the sounder starts to shut down, he shifts to a subtle shaky-jig retrieve on the way up. "Especially once you've caught a few, they can definitely shut down. Get a bit of lock jaw. But the old SlimSwimZ that's managed to convince another one out of that school to eat."
A rogue Mozambique tilapia — "Here we go. Here's something a bit different" — is used to remind viewers of what not to release back into the dam. "Those guys we don't want to put back in the water. We'll dong him on the head and chuck him on the bank."
Rigging gets detailed attention. The Demonz jig head is pitched as a finesse tool that gets plastics deeper without bulking up the profile, and the jig spinner is explained step by step — clipped onto the jig head, line tied to the centre loop, a blade running above the plastic for subtle flash without the full vibration of a spinner bait. The rod-and-line kit is the TT Black Mamba 2-4 kilo in both 7'0" and 7'6", 2500 spin reels, 10lb Platypus Pulse X8 or Bionic X9 braid and 10-15lb Platypus Hard Armour fluorocarbon leader.
The pair also share their approach to reading a new dam. They target points, drop-offs and the shallow bars near them, using Navionics or Captain charts on their phones to map contours quickly. "You can even look on your phone. You can get Navionics or Captain and they'll give you a good idea of those contours and which ones to sort of focus your attention on so you're not looking through the whole lake to find a fish."
By the time the wind builds and the middle-of-the-day bite fades, the presenters have covered the full pattern: where to look, what to tie on, how to fish it when the school is hot and what to change when it is not. "We had a cracker morning bite out on the water chasing bass on our go-to ZMan SlimSwimZ," Declan says on sign-off. "Fantastic for chasing the bass."