Tackle Tactics TV host Justin and cameraman Deck put Z-Man's Prawns Elite to work on Sunshine Coast shallow reef in a recent session that opened with a double hook-up, progressed through a belt of snapper, spangled and grassy emperor, and finished with a mackerel tuna melee on 20g TT Hardcore slugs — a textbook matching-the-hatch outing.
The reef plastics inspiration came from across the Tasman. "This is inspired by the mob in New Zealand," Deck said early in the session. "They absolutely love these Prawns dropping them down on the reef. So we thought we'd come out here and try this." The first drift, in 8 to 10 metres, produced small snapper on the drop — unmissable visual signals that the bait was landing in the right water column.
The technique was minimalist. "Casting up ahead of the flow, slow drift," Justin said. "You're just allowing it to fall. A lot of the time it'll get eaten on the drop. Otherwise, you're just giving it a few hops and letting a bit more line down." A better fish then crunched a 3.5-inch Prawns Elite in mid-column and turned into a spangled emperor. "The colours of those things are incredible," Deck said.
As the reef bite solidified, Justin laid out his kit: a 4–8kg Black Mamba rod, a 4000-size reel and 20lb Platypus Pulse X8 braid running to a 20lb leader. A better fish found later in the drift was a grassy emperor that nearly spooled the line against the bottom before Deck recovered it. "Big head shakes," Justin said. "I wonder what that was. Could have been any number of creatures."
Moving into deeper water, the pair switched to unrigged 3.5-inch Prawns Elite on a 1/2-ounce TT Headlocks HD jighead. "Brutally strong hook in that same sort of prawny profile," Deck said. It scored an unexpected bycatch — a Murray cod in deeper reef water, an outlier catch that fit the session's recurring line: "Everything eats a prawn."
Justin also made the case for the pre-rigged 3.5-inch size as a small-but-versatile lure for multiple species beyond snapper. "Guys are loving it for jacks, barra, jewies, flatties, all sorts of species," he said. "It's got a nice slow natural fall, that segmented body and that tail for a beautiful natural tail kick and then that leg and antenna vibration. It's working through the whole time whether it's falling or whether you're flicking it."
Offshore, the morning ran into a wind-up that brought fussy mackerel tuna up to the surface. The pair dropped 20g TT Hardcore slugs into feeding schools around bird activity on tiny bait. "They'll be on tiny little bait, but we persisted," Justin said. "They're so much fun catching them underneath the birds like that. There's absolute chaos everywhere as far as you can see."
A single cast produced a hook-up that pulled drag on the 4–8kg outfit. The next cast produced a double hook-up. "Pull a bunch of drag and it's such a visual thing," Justin said. A 10g TT Hardcore release is coming, which Deck flagged would help when the bait dropped to jelly-bean size.
Justin's closing note was a method piece. Anglers who find mackerel tuna schools feeding into the wind should cut the motor early, let the wind carry the boat to the edge of the school and keep the cast out ahead of the fish. "It's just as important how you approach the tuna as it is what gear you're using," he said. "The fish will generally feed into the wind."
