Fishart Torpedo 6g spin-tail lure review

My collection of freshwater fishing lures isn’t that big, so I visited the local tackle shop to pick a lure that was likely to work rather than suck it and see with lures that have done little to catch anything at a local waterway aptly nicknamed Lake Disappointment.

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My one problem was that I’d brought fishing rods spooled with 6kg line, and the skinny from the tackle shop was that local fishers were currently hooking up on some monster cod. The bloke behind the counter recommended 12kg line as the absolute minimum.

Okay, small bait equals small fish, I thought. A far corner of the shop had a small display of some 6.0-gram Fishart Torpedo spin-tail lures that would suit a lighter line perfectly.

The bloke in the shop that served me knew very little about the Fishart lures – he hadn’t sold many. Grabbing one was a roll of the dice.

The Made-in-China (big words on the packaging make it very clear where it is from) Fishart Torpedo lures look quite plain on the shelf compared with other fishing lures wrapped in packaging sometimes as garish as the lures they contain.

The Fish Art Torpedo is basically a torpedo-shaped sinker with a gold-coloured spinning tail, featuring an eye at the top, a treble hook hanging below, and a very-out-of-place toothy shark mouth graphic emblazoned along each side.

There are a number of colours to choose from. I went with a dark blue-black one named Matt Demon, in part because I liked the play on words, but also because it was a cloudy, overcast day and I wanted the spin-tail, not the lure, to stand out.

You can buy the Fishart Torpedo lure from a number of sources, including bulk online retailer Kogan as it turns out. It will cost you around $15, which is a bit pricey given you can get so much more in a similarly priced, much larger and more detailed locally made spinner bait lure.

Rip open the packet, tie the Fishart Torpedo to the line, and you’re ready to fish.

The 6g weight is easy to cast even in a blustery crosswind and can be placed accurately.

You can use two separate actions with the fishing lure, either bobbing it along the bottom with pauses to let it sink, or using a slow retrieve to keep it at a constant depth in the water.

I’d given the Fishart Torpedo to my father-in-law to use while I tried my luck with a spinner bait lure among the big gumtrees lining the Murray River on the Cobram side of Yarrawonga at a place called Green Grass.

After about 40 minutes of fruitless casting, including three excursions into the water to unhook the lure from where it had snagged on submerged tree roots, my father-in-law was ready to call stumps.

I’d been struggling a bit with the spinner bait lure, so I was keen to give the Fishart Torpedo a try just to feel the spinner’s action. A couple of casts, and we’d head home.

I picked a spot on the river where a large overhanging gumtree was casting a faint shadow on the water, and easily flicked the lure into the boundary between the sunlight and shadow.

After a couple of seconds of reeling, the line went taut and the reel’s drag started clicking. Another snag?

Then the line started running. Yep, I’d hooked a fish. Not too big by the feel of it, but a fish all the same.

Whatever fish I’d caught, pulling it in was something of an anticlimax compared with, say, a head-shaking flathead or a leaping salmon. After putting up a bit of a fight to start with, the fish stopped struggling as I reeled it in.

The reason why it was such an easy catch was soon apparent: It was a fat, lazy 50cm Murray cod.

The cod had inhaled the Fishart Torpedo lure whole, with the treble hook embedded deep.

Like the surprise Murray cod, the Fishart Torpedo lure has lived to fight another day.

Granted, the simply made Matt Demon was a strange pick in a shop full of higher-priced, locally made lures featuring more frills and exquisite detail by comparison.

But it showed catching a Murray cod can at times remain something of a blue-black art.