For years, the soft vibe has been a go-to lure for anglers jigging deep structure for inshore and estuary species. But veteran Queensland charter skipper and fishing educator Ryan Moody reckons many anglers are leaving bites on the table by reaching for one every time.
"Vibes are one of the most popular lures for jigging deeper positions inshore and in estuaries," Moody says. He is not writing them off — far from it. "They're a great versatile plastic," he says, explaining that a vibe "vibrate[s] on the way up to resemble a fish, but they fall very quickly because the weight is mostly towards the front."
That fast fall, Moody argues, is the lure's weakness. "Sometimes it can limit the reaction time for fish to bite, because fish bite on the fall," he says. "They don't bite while it's going up — only a pelagic will do that." For bottom-hugging demersal species, the window to commit to a quickly-sinking vibe can simply be too short.
His preferred alternative is a sinking stickbait. Moody points to a 36-gram model that weighs about the same as a comparable vibe but behaves very differently in the water. "The sinking stickbait will sink at half the speed of the vibe simply because of its action," he says. Worked with a few short bounces or one sharp rip upward, the lure "flutters" on the drop and "takes a lot longer to get to the bottom than a vibe."
That slower, fluttering descent is the whole point. "It gives the fish more reaction time to bite it on the fall," Moody says. "You've got a lure that's suspended a bit more and it looks like it's injured on the fall. That is why I get more bites out of these than I do vibes."
As for working either lure, Moody's advice is to experiment with the retrieve. He suggests lifting the lure up to a metre or two off the bottom before letting it fall, then mixing slow, steady lifts with quick, erratic ones until the fish show a preference. "Just toss it up on the day and see what the fish like," he says. "It could be different from one day to the next. Do they like an erratic lure? Do they like it moving slow?"
Moody is careful not to oversell the switch. "At the end of the day, vibes still work," he says. "But if you want to increase your bites, especially when fishing deep structure, sinking stickbaits have just a more natural presentation."
It is a subtle change — the same jigging action, the same depths, the same deep reef and estuary haunts. But for anglers who have plateaued on the vibe, swapping in a slow-sinking stickbait that hangs and flutters through the strike zone could be the difference between a quiet session and a full esky.