Bassday Hades 75F

Hades is a shallow-running saltwater minnow built to prioritise casting distance and a stable, easy-to-throw flight posture, using tungsten weights locked by Bassday's TSL system for a natural swim even in fast-flowing water. That consistency is worth noting because a bait that changes character between casts tends to draw fewer follow-up strikes than one anglers can rely on to repeat the same motion.

It's built to work shallow water in any situation — shallow surf, very shallow tidal flats, reef margins and rivers — wherever the surface layer needs covering for seabass. It is worth having rigged before a session starts, since the situations it covers are common enough that reaching for it mid-session often costs a missed window.

Retrieve it slowly to swim naturally through the top 20-50cm without a jerky, splashy action; watch for the lure darting momentarily off the current, which is when most strikes come. Varying the pace and the length of each pause through a session is usually the quickest way to work out what the fish want on a given day.

An 8-9ft seabass spinning rod, a 2500-3500 reel, 8-14lb braid and a 14-20lb fluorocarbon leader suit the smaller size, stepping up rod power and leader strength for the larger 127F. That balance of rod, reel and line keeps casting accuracy high without sacrificing the strength needed to see a decent fish through to the net or the wall.