By Paul Lynch

Fishermen are always on the lookout for ways to improve their catch rates - when I stumbled across these LED lure I was intrigued by the fact this lure had a flashing red LED in the tail of it.

We weren’t sure whether the light would attract the fish like they said it would, or scare them away. They claim the LED works best in dirty water, dawn & dusk, after dark and deep water jigging. We weren’t taking their word for it, we thought we’d give them a bash and decide for ourselves.

There is a local river has good numbers of Barramundi with the dirty water they can be quite tough to catch. 

The one thing about this spot with the water been so dirty is you get plenty of hits on the lures but its very hard to hook the fish up as they don’t seem to be able to see the lure well enough to strike it accurately. 

We thought this would be the ideal place to test out the flashers. 

We were fishing 30 minutes and no sign of action, the tide was still stagnant and there was not a lot of flow. 

Once the run out flow started to pick up, bait started busting yet still no action on the lures, I was starting to wonder if the light was scaring the fish away. 

When suddenly BAM I was nailed by a solid barra.

He put up a big fight and in a couple of minutes I had him tamed and he was landed, I was a little surprised that the first hit had hooked up. 

The next hour was mayhem - hit after hit, barra after barra I still couldn’t get over how many fish were staying connected.

As the run out slowed down so did the action, my mate Mark and I looked at each other, nothing needed to be said. 

Mark and I have since been hooked on these little beauties, later on after reading up a little more we found there is quite a lot of research on the light. 

I don’t believe everything I read or hear, I’ve got to test something out for myself and make my own decision. 

I encourage you to do the same, if you want to have a look at these Balista LED Lures, they are now stocked at your local store Nautical Marine. 

COMPETITION - WIN BALISTER LURES

Newsport will be running a fishing photo competition with Balista LED lures as the prize. 

Send in the photo of your best catches to competitions@thenewsport.com.au and make sure to include your name, contact details, description of the fish and where you caught it (a general location is enough, you don't have to reveal your secret fishing spots). 

The winner of the best photo competition will receive five Balista LED lures while two runners-up will receive two each.

Results will be announced on April 30.