Ask most anglers what they tie on to jig deep structure inshore or in the estuary, and the answer is usually a soft vibe. Queensland charter veteran and fishing educator Ryan Moody thinks that habit is quietly costing people fish.
Moody has no quarrel with the lure itself. "Vibes are one of the most popular lures for jigging deeper positions inshore and in estuaries," he says, and he rates them as "a great versatile plastic." The catch is in how they sink. 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," he explains.
For fish that feed on the drop, that speed is a problem. "Sometimes it can limit the reaction time for fish to bite, because fish bite on the fall," Moody says. "They don't bite while it's going up — only a pelagic will do that." Drop a fast-sinking vibe past a bottom-hugging demersal and it can be gone before the fish decides to eat.
His fix is a sinking stickbait. Moody favours a 36-gram model that weighs about the same as a comparable vibe but moves through the water very differently. "The sinking stickbait will sink at half the speed of the vibe simply because of its action," he says. Given a few short bounces or one sharp upward rip, it "flutters" back down and "takes a lot longer to get to the bottom than a vibe."
That long, fluttering fall is exactly what he is after. "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."
Whichever lure is on, he says the retrieve is worth playing with. Lift it a metre or two off the bottom, let it drop, and alternate slow, steady lifts with sharp, erratic ones until the fish tip their hand. "Just toss it up on the day and see what the fish like," Moody says. "It could be different from one day to the next. Do they like an erratic lure? Do they like it moving slow?"
He is the first to say vibes still belong in the box. "At the end of the day, vibes still work," Moody says. "But if you want to increase your bites, especially when fishing deep structure, sinking stickbaits have just a more natural presentation."
The action is the same, the depth is the same, and the gear barely changes. But for anyone stuck in a rut with a vibe, a slow-sinking stickbait that hovers through the strike zone might just be the small tweak that fills the esky.