Japanese company Zipbaits, aiming to develop a specialized lure, which targets fish that prey on little shrimps, designed the Zoea Lipple 45F bait.

It is always a challenge to develop a new lure, that serves a particular type of fishing. Japanese company Zipbaits, aiming to develop a specialized lure, which targets fish that prey on little shrimps, designed the Zoea Lipple 45F bait.

To accomplish this target, they had to achieve a complete and total imitation of the wavy motion that small shrimps perform, under the water’s surface. This goal has been accomplished by utilizing the buoyancy of the lure as it moves.

The Zipbaits Zoea Lipple 45F is a lure with great buoyancy. It is a lure specializing in rockfish species, feeding on the tiny shrimp Japanese fishermen and chefs call “Ami” and which floats close to the surface. But the most important features on it, are the “Lip” and “Internal Ribs”. The shape of the lip is what is known as – a drift lip. As a result, it works well, even with super slow retrieve, or with the currents. It’s small, but wide and strong against retrieval, yet it doesn’t allow the lure to dive too much. Moreover, even with a super slow retrieve, it does not make waves, leaves trace, or produces vibrations at a depth of 5 cm to 20 cm below the surface.

The Zoea Lipple 45F is a transparent lure, hence allows light to pass through its body. It was observed that when light flows through the lures body from the top, it creates an unprecedented prism effect. To make the lure look more like a shrimp and diffuse the light that goes through its body, Zipbaits introduced 6 ribs in the 45mm body, also with the purpose make the lure resemble even better the abdominal segments of a shrimp. Hence the combination of light + ribs will create a unique combination.

The aim was to make Rockfish aware of the presence of an Ami shrimp. However, arranging the ribs inside, caused the loss of buoyancy for the Zoea Lipple 45F as the size of the air chamber was reduced. So the development team hit a wall as the floating posture was affected and the action of the lure as well.

The Zipbaits design team realized that due to the installed ribs, the strength of the outer body of the lure had increased, hence they could reduce the thickness of the wall and make it as thin as possible. As a result buoyancy was restored and a small weight was placed on the front to correct the lures posture.

Once the problem of buoyancy and posture was solved, Zipbaits started working on the installation of the lip. The Zipbaits design team attached a total of 18 different types of lips to the same body and tested them extensively every day.

After that was given the Go Ahead status, they started working on achieving an admirable flight distance, hence the Mag-Drive technology was called into action, to increase the flight distance, despite the difficulty of mounting it on such a small lure.

Other features of this unique lure include:

• Keimura paint has been applied as a background painting method. Of course the lure remains transparent in appearance.
• The enclosed glowing sphere was also changed to Keimura varnish.
• The ultimate challenge was the eyes, which were also specially processed to make them clear.
• Fluorine coated hooks were rigged to increase hook up rates

Lipple is a synthetic word, the combination of Light and Ripple. Zipbaits added the term Zoea and to make the name sound like “Ami”.

Despite the lengthy trial and error process that each lure goes through the first source of inspiration is always the one guiding the process.

Finally, the ZBL Zoea Lipple 45F was completed. It’s not a lure that can hit a catch in any situation. The fish are conscious creatures, especially when they feed on the surface layer. But with the Zoea Lipple it is possible to achieve a fishing result that is unrivaled. It will perform well even in very slow retrieval, on top of the surface layer and it will not make waves.

There is no doubt that you will get more fishing results if you use this “Perfectly Clear Lure” as a weapon in the Light Rock Fishing scene.

Technical Characteristics

• Length: 45mm
• Weight: 3 gr
• Action: Floating
• Ideal for White Seabream, Saddled Seabream
• Fluorine Coated Treble Hooks: PTFE #14
• Split Ring: # 1