I’ve been fishing the top water (floating) and sub-surface (slow sinking) lures a lot, recently.  They don’t get hung up in very shallow water and the strikes are often explosive.  Whipping these lures doesn’t require much gear, and I’ve been mainly casting from the water’s edge.

The lure bite has slowed dramatically due to the abundance of oama inshore but I still prefer throwing the lures vs. dealing with messy live or dead oama.

The lures in the photo were all manufactured in Japan.  Some, like the sub-surface Shimano Waxwings in the bottom row, are sold in the U.S Domestic Market.  The others may have been sold in the U.S. at one time but are now only available in the Japan Domestic Market (JDM) in those models or colors.

The 4 light colored ones with green stripes look like they were drawn on because I marked them up to look like oama! The larger Waxwing caught this 16″ white papio (tagged and released) without the bad artwork but I figured it couldn’t hurt to make the lure look like the food the predators are hammering now.

The chubby lure in the 2nd row, left, had been getting hammered by kaku when I threw it in another color scheme before the oama moved in.

The top secret JDM lure in the upper left, has caught omilu and kaku.  It’s been so effective that I was asked to never show it online.  Sorry. It won’t be in the Best Top Water or Sub-Surface Contest but the other lures will be.

If there’s enough interest I’ll run a poll so you guys can guess which one is deemed the most effective lure.