Lures

What Lures Should I Bring to Swains Reef?

We suggest you should leave the mainland with a generous pack of Jigs, Soft Plastics, Poppers and Stickbaits. You should expect to lose a fair few of these lures to toothy pelagics, bust offs and the snaggy reef structure so make sure you bring more than enough lures to last you. 

You dont need to go all-out on expensive poppers and stickbaits for the reef, the quality of lures from Nomad, Rapala and Shimano has drastically improved over the past few years and you can be confident that their actions and hardware wont let you down. We like our stickbaits and poppers to be from 160mm to 220mm giving you a good presence in the water attracting larger pelagic fish.

You should make sure bring some soft plastics as well since they are dynamite on the reef fish, jerkshads, paddletails and curly tail silhouettes from 5-7 inches would be our preference. We suggest matching these plastics with 4/0 - 6/0 size jig heads weighing from 3/8oz to 3/4oz.

Many people recall their time jigging in the deeper water off Swains as their best memories of the trip, slow pitch of high speed jigging is an effective way to catch reef fish and pelagics alike. It can be helpful to bring a handful of jigs in a range of shapes and weights.