The Stiffy Minnow: I like to catch anything with fins but bream are certainly one of my favourite fish and I have probably spent more hours fishing for them than any other species. I have used plenty of hard bodied lures on bream and there are already some great lures out there, but I have to say I wasn't satisfied that the perfect lure had been built. I knew what I wanted but making it wasn't easy. The 6 cm STIFFY MINNOW is made to handle the fishing I love the most. I like to catch bream in shallow water where I can see them take the lure – I like to catch them when I can see them in the snags and I like to catch them in oyster racks. Sometimes bream are super spooky so I also wanted a lure that would cast a very long way.
The stiffy minnow is designed to have an erratic action that responds well to a bit of angler input. You can work it fast or slow and it is a killer if you just stop the lure and let it rise very slowly towards the surface.
Most of the small fish that bream prey on are long slim whitebait style species and apart from looking natural this style of lure allows for tremendous hook exposure – if a bream eats a Stiffy Minnow the odds are that the fish will be hooked and stay there right up to the net. Again we opted for the Owner hooks and rings. In my book the owners are still the best hardware for the job but sometimes you pay the price for the hard tempering and high carbon content that allows the extreme sharpness of this product. You can break hooks when removing them from tough bream mouths with pliers but I have decided to live with this issue because overall there just isn't a better hook out there than an owner. Always carry a few spare hooks and try to wash your lures in freshwater before storing them.
When you first see a STIFFY MINNOW in the flesh you might think it is a tad big – most anglers do, but the bream don't. The lure is the size it is because I have noticed over the years that bream from legal size up don't mind a bit of a mouthful. A lot of field testing went into this lure and this just seemed to be the size the bream preferred. One thing is for sure – if there is a really big bream in range it will find and eat a stiffy minnow. In the first two weeks after the production models came out I caught one over four pound, Chris Wright caught one over four and a slightly disbelieving Starling (“let me know when the bream size comes out”) caught his second biggest over four as well. These captures are not a co incidence and big bream are fatally attracted to the Stiffy Minnow.
The minnow is still a fairly small lure but we decided that quite a few larger fish like to eat small offerings so we used a through wire construction method that makes sure you stay connected to whatever large fish tries to get into the act. The wire adds a bit of expense and is a bit of a pain in the bum to produce but so far quite a few mangrove jacks, barra, GTs, jumbo flathead and large tailor have failed to demolish the little aussie battler. The through wire construction is just a bit of insurance for our STIFFY customers but I know that I like to land any unexpected oversized critters that try and get in on the act so other anglers probably think the same way.
Our colour range is about to expand with some trout colours to be included because this lure has caught trout very well on the couple of occasions I have trolled it. You might have to watch this space because I will be mounting some more serious trout expeditions in the near future to see just how good the lure is on trout.
Heading Level 3
THE STIFFY MINNOW
