Lance Butler-designed Killalures
By Alex Julius From a trunk-like, needle-shaped nose to a perpendicular flat nose with a bib, the imaginative designs of legendary barra guide, Lance Butler, are proving themselves as outstanding barra lures. Lance Butler has been guiding in the NT and Qld for over 30 years. Nowadays a regular guide at the famous Arnhemland Barramundi Nature Lodge, when he’s not putting clients on to trophy barra, he is chiselling away at new barra-lure designs in his Cardwell home workshop. Highly-respected among his peers, Lance’s reputation as a barra guide is legendary, and it’s no surprise that he has applied his barra-fishing knowledge to his own lure designs. For several years now, Lance has been working closely with JM Gillies Killalures to produce a range of commercially-available lures which have well and truly become great barra catchers. Two that stand out are: Killalure Needle Nose and Killalure 2Deadly.
Killalure Needlenose Viewed side on, the Needlenose injection-moulded-plastic Needlenose has an unusual profile: It looks a bit like the nose of an Elephant seal. According to Lance, the inspiration for this unique design had nothing to do with fur and blubber; in fact, the idea came to him whilst watching Formula One racing. “I noticed that Formula One race cars have a very low nose to reduce air resistance,” Lance said. This light-bulb moment led him to applying this design aspect into a diving minnow lure.
“I wanted a lure with a low tow point but to also draw from the lure body, not the bib. “Having a low tow point provides a number of benefits: it minimises water resistance on the front of the lure body allowing the lure to dive deeper and, from an angler’s perspective, decreases resistance when either retrieving or trolling, therefore reducing angler fatigue.
“The Needlenose has a sweet, tight swimming action as it is drawn from the low-slung nose rather than off the bib,” Lance explained.
Watch the video of Alex Julius with nice barra on Killalure Needlenose
Personally, it’s one of the many performance aspects of the Needlenose that I like. I was recently jig trolling some barra at the mouth of the Mary River, and the reduced front-on resistance enabled me to really rip the lure forward on the stop-and-jig, making it dart then stop and back up. The barra were smashing it.
“You can expect that the deep version will dive about 4m when cast and retrieved and up to 7m when trolling,” Lance said.
Like other lures in the Killalure range (2Easy and 2Deep), the Needlenose also incorporates three different interchangeable rattle chambers: for a loud rattle, for a single-ball rattle and for a silent action. It is currently available in eight eye-catching colour patterns. It measures 150mm size, but Lance hopes to design a smaller version in the future.
The Needlenose is available in 20+ and 8+ diving versions.
Killalure 2Deadly The innovative 2Deadly is another one of Lance Butler’s creative designs as it incorporates the features of a shallow-running minnow and a surface popper into the one lure.
“This lure can be fished as both a surface popper and a shallow diver in the same retrieve,” Lance explained.
“Cast it out then allow the lure to rest before giving the rod tip a sharp flick of the wrist to make the lure pop sharply.
“Hopefully, this attracts the attention of any barra lurking in the vicinity with a sound that is very much like a hungry barra boof.
“If the barra doesn’t eat the lure off the surface, at this point a twitched retrieve may trigger a strike as you reel it in,” Lance said.
The Killalure 2Deadly is available in three sizes – 60, 85 and 120mm – plus a good array of colours. In the 2015 Barra Nationals, Shane Compain used the 2Deadly 120mm on the last day to catch a wonderful 105cm barra which helped his Team Tackle World to win the tournament. Visit www.jmgillies.com.au, JM Gillies Facebook or your favourite tackle store to check out the Killalure Needlenose and Killalure 2Deadly range of lures.
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