Cedar Plugs by Williamson Lures
While speaking to the guys at Williamson Lures regarding new lure developments for the coming season, I mentioned how difficult it was for us to obtain a decent Cedar Plug. One thing I must say about Williamson Lures is that they produce almost any saltwater lure you can think of, they give it a lot of thought and then produce it well. "Not a problem, we'll send you some Cedar plugs to try out" and two weeks later they arrived.
Now anyone who has used a genuine Cedar plug for Tuna will not divulge too much of their new found secret. Yes, they regularly catch fish when other lures fail, and when you see it swim you'll understand why. We have been importing Cedar Plugs from the USA for our own use on the charter boats but they have been extremely costly and not readily available. A while ago we tested beautifully painted 'cedar plug' imitations made of hard resin, from another lure maker but unfortunately the action was not quite the same and few fish were taken on them.
Williamson Lures cedar plugs are the genuine article. Made from a hard imported Cedar wood and lathe turned to ensure they are symmetrical and do not spin - a very important factor in trolled lures. We have only used the plain wood (unpainted) plugs in the past and have enjoyed great success with Albacore (Longfin) and Yellowfin Tuna, and now we have the opportunity to try out the painted version as well as the plain wood - bullet and side-flow jet head versions.
The plugs we received incorporate a wide range of inviting colours along with the original plain wood version, and by all accounts all should produce a lot of fish. We shall see .....
And we saw.... Well it's not often one comes across such an effective lure. Seeing as it's not our Tuna season at present I decided to try out these plugs on the Yellowtail at Cape Point. If you can tempt a Yellowtail into eating a lure, tempting a Tuna becomes a walk in the park. We were battling for Yellowtail strikes on deep diving plugs, spinners and surface squids, lures which the fish usually have little hesitation in eating, so why not try something very different - the Cedar plugs.
A Cedar Plug is a surface lure and should be positioned where you would run such lures. The first thing you will notice when fishing a Cedar plug, is the incredible swimming action they have in the water. Very different to that of squid type surface plastics which generally run straight with an occasional wiggle. These Cedar plugs have a life-like swimming action - head down, tail wiggle and slight side to side action. I have run 3 Cedars next to each other with no tangles.
The Cedar Plug has a hole through the centre for the trace line, so you simply slide the plug onto your line and tie on a hook. Although they are designed to take a standard shank needle-eye hook, which is very hard to find, I found a 4/0 treble hook does the trick. I did experiment with a swinging hook at the back but found the retention rate with a stiff hook rig to be better.
Now brown colours are not my favorite in surface lures for Yellowtail, I prefer green/yellow's and red/orange's, in that order. Knowing the plain wood works well on Tuna I tried it for the Yellowtail, along with a blue/green/yellow plug. To say the strike rate on the plain wood bullet head was phenomenal would not be doing it justice. Of the 20 odd fish caught on the day, 16 were on the plain wood Cedar plug. It worked so well that, even with all other lures already in position at correct trolling speeds, the fish were picking off this plug as soon as it reached its spread position. I guess what really summed up the incredible success of this lure was a comment by the charter client, shaking his head in disbelief - "on a piece of wood !".
If you don't already have these Williamson Cedar Plugs you have to get them, especially the plain wood bullet head. Their action is like no other lure and that's what makes them so effective in the spread.
