Wooden and Teflon Fishing Lures
Aubrey Da Gama Fishing Lures started in March 1998 while on a fishing trip to Bazaruto in Mozambique – South Africa. David Lilford and I (Charlie Lilford) made a couple of wooden plugs (total of 20) which we took with to target Kingfish (Giant Trevally). They were all sliding plugs meaning that the plug could run up the leader line, this is to ensure a solid hookup and to prevent the fish from throwing the hooks.
The first morning Dave and I got up at 04h00 am and started a long drive down to the south point of the island +/- 45 km. We arrived at 05h30 am and on Dave’s second cast he hooked a big GT after a ferocious fight, the fish was tagged & released +/-30 kg. We tagged a further 6 GT’s in the morning ranging between 20 & 35 kg and on arrival back at the lodge we were speaking to Louis Erasmus manager of the lodge telling him how well these plugs worked (surface lures). We showed him the video footage before he believed us. In the week we were there we tagged 28 GT’s. On leaving the lodge Louis asked what are you going to call these lures. He then said: “ Aubrey Da Gama” because I always said: “ Aubrey da Gama” to the staff instead of “obrigado” (the Portuguese word for thank you). We said that sounds good and so the name Aubrey Da Gama was born.
When I returned from Mozambique I started manufacturing Aubrey Da Gama Fishing Lures, I brought out a range of wooden plugs ½ oz to 6 oz, up to 3 ½ oz they would make floating very easy to retrieve and developed a colour range, red head, pearly white, chartreuse, fire tiger, blue Mack riel, pink Mack riel and mullet. We have now discontinued our wooden plugs and moved to producing Teflon plugs.
We offer full a range of Teflon plugs free running or fixed with a variety of sizes and weights ranging from ½ oz to 4 oz; These plugs work very well even when fishing from rocky outcrops as they can be banged on the rocks where wooden plugs generally gets dinged and damaged.
In 2006 we brought out the Aubrey Puppie & Alsatian both floating surface fishing lures. These have worked exceptionally well in the Southern & Eastern Cape estuaries on Garrick, Elf/Shad & Skip Jack.
In 2012 after numerous people kept on asking for bucktail jigs we launched the “Corib” bucktail jig. Named after our Labrador at home who was the first to eat one of our bucktail jigs. We offer a variety of different colors and sizes ranging from 3/8 oz up to 2- 1/2 oz. These Bucktails are excellent for targeting most game fish species.
In 2016 we launched a range of Weedless Paddle Tails. On a trip to the Transkei while spinning for Kob in a very Rocky area we lost many paddle tails using the traditional rig setup. We then put some thought into it to find a way to change the rigging of the paddle tail in such a way that it will prevent the lure from getting stuck or hooked up on redbait pods. First we used cable ties to fix the hook eye to the lure, but we eventually changed over to using springs. We then created a Carolina rigged Weedless Paddle Tail as well as I fixed weight clip on rig. These lures have been exceptionally productive fishing for Kob in rocky areas as well as beaches and rivers.
