John Costello on Mangrove Jack

John Costello from My Lure Box gives us some inside tips from his 25+ years experience chasing Mangrove Jack; and explains how this knowledge has found its way into his lures.

In this video with Coastwatch’s Dave Macdonald, John covers:

☑️ Firing a lure into the snags and landing in the right spot

☑️ How to get numbers and consistency

☑️ Keys to convincing a super smart fish within 30cm that you’ve got what it wants.

☑️ Colours for locations and structure.

David MacDonald: 

We all heard about the jack burners. Tell us, why do they work so well?

John Costello: 

So I’ve been jack obsessed for over 25 years and that was probably the thing that really set my fishing, lure fishing in particular alight. And I’ve been on so many adventures chasing jacks and fishing with a variety of lures that I had in my head for all of those years what would be the perfect presentation for a mangrove jackand I needed something that if you know jackfishing you know they’re not going to move very far from their rock, big overhanging tree or a log to come and get a bait. So I’ve designed something that you can fire into the snags and it won’t get hung up.

So this has been built with a weedless weight system and it has a level fall so that just like any bait in a system. Jacks are super smart as well. When a lure stops and turns up like that, that’ll turn a lot of fish off. Not every fish, you’ll still get some, but to get numbers and consistency with mangrove jack. A level fall on a lightly presented so if you throw it in and it makes a big splash, jacks in the shallows will spook a lot of the time. This presents really lightly and it’s got an action that is unlike anything else that they’ve seen.So super strong construction. You need that for jacks. And there’s a little innovative design.

The tail turned up helps at fall level, but that stinging single, it’s the only product out on the market that’s got a stinging single that’s that strong and most of the fish get caught on that. Nothing else on the market comes with that steering signal. So there’s a lot of fish that get missed without having that.

A traditional jig head style of fishing, you’ll get a lot of short strikes and that’s what used to happen to me. So there’s a lot of design and and uh prototyping that’s gone into this. It will start paddling the moment it hits the water. And jacks might only move that far. So you’ve only got 30 centimetres to convince a jack that what you’ve got is what it wants. And that’s what these are.

David MacDonald: 

What’s your preferred colour?

John Costello: 

It depends on where I’m fishing. They all work. We’ve gone on sessions where we’ve cleaned up on everything. My favourite and in the testing we did around the mangroves was anything with a gold fleck in it.Jacks have been notoriously all over gold ever since the little gold bombers were released and used back in the day but around natural structure I fish with anything with a gold fleck in it. And around pontoons I like the naturals and the whites.

Part of that is because as an angler, remember how I said you want to be really close to the structure you’re fishing? As an angler you can see that bait coming along the edge of a pontoon in a canal and you want and you want it to be as close as you can get it to that pontoon. So those lighter colours that are presented here.They’re fantastic in the canals.

But they all work. We’ve caught tons of fish on all of them. It’s more about location. Can you get that lure into the best position for the jack to come and grab it and it’s usually only that far away. You want to land that lure right next to the log. And that’s the trick with some of these baits.

David MacDonald: 

I think another thing is also that weedless hook. Because you’re fishing in that tight structure.

John Costello: 

That’s right.

David MacDonald: 

Around the pontoons and you just can’t have it hook up or get weed on it. Like it needs to be presented like you said, as soon as it hits the water.

John Costello: 

Yeah. So chasing jacks in a creek or in a pontoon, there might only be one or two major logs where you’re super confident and if you ruin it by getting a treble stuck on that log, that might have been that one log where the big angry jack was ready to eat and he’s there because he’s using it to ambush bait. So having something that you can confidently throw deep into snags and retrieve it without getting hooked on the snag, it’s a major piece. You want to scare the paint off that lure by getting it as far into the cover where the jacks are confident that they’re gonna grab it and be back into their snack. It’s all come into the design of it.

David MacDonald: 

Fantastic.

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