Team Samaki Three-Peats at Faust:

When the final round of the 2024 Zerek BARRA Series rolled onto Peter Faust Dam, there was one storyline hovering above all others: could Team Samaki—Josh Lowry and Tommy Wood—pull off the rare and elusive “three-peat”? They had won this round twice before, they were the naming sponsor, and they were one of the most respected big-fish pairing in the entire tour. But with an all-night marathon behind them, a howling southeaster pumping across the lake, and the final two-night shootout on one of Queensland’s most volatile impoundments, nothing was guaranteed.

By the time the dust settled, however, there was no doubt.
Josh and Tommy didn’t just win the Samaki round—they dominated it, delivered some of the heaviest two-night weights the series has ever seen, and stamped themselves as one of the most consistent and forward-thinking teams in Australian impoundment barra fishing.

Dialling It Back In After the All-Nighter

Coming off the earlier “all-nighter” round, Lowry and Wood were the first to admit they hadn’t completely pieced the puzzle together. Tommy was experimenting with new forward-facing techniques—valuable lessons for the future, but not quite polished enough to win under pressure.

“There was a lot learned,” Wood admitted, “but when we came back for the two-nighter, we reverted to what won it for us previously—and the fish just stuck.”

Armed with experience, adjustments, and a determination to fish their strengths, Team Samaki wasted no time settling into the style of fishing that had already put trophies on their shelf.

Locating the Highway: The Creek Channel Edge

Peter Faust’s vast, shallow expanses are often intimidating, but the pair have history on this lake—and one key piece of structure had changed their fortunes years earlier.

While idling across the horse paddock region, they had once stumbled over a major creek channel with a single strategic tree perched right on its edge. Over time, and with more mapping and more forward-facing sonar work, they learned exactly how barra use that channel as a travel route.

This year’s conditions—wind, bait movement, fish height, and pressure—pushed them even further into that system.

“We followed that creek channel all the way up into the horse paddock,” Lowry explained. “Fishing anywhere between 20 and 30 feet, just scoping the middle, you’d see big packs of barra sliding through.”

Finding water protected from the worst of the southeaster was key. Those small windows of calmer water allowed the fish to position, feed, and interact with the lures more consistently. And Team Samaki capitalised, big time.

Perspective View & the Reddick: The Deadly Combination

The big turning point for the event came when the team switched from forward view to perspective view on their Garmin setup—a decision driven by wind, depth, and how high the fish were sitting.

“The fish were higher, the wind made forward view hard, so we used perspective view, found them, lined them up, and hit them with the Reddick,” Wood said.

Once that decision clicked, everything else fell into place.

The Lure of the Event: The Samaki Redic Jerkbait

Perfectly suspending.
Perfectly controllable.
Perfectly matched to Faust’s pressured fish.

The standout technique was “gentle—almost delicate—twitching,” a style very different to the aggressive saltwater jerkbaiting. Subtlety was everything. Team Samaki would place the lure in a fish’s face, allow the barra to nose up, then make the tiniest micro-tweak to trigger the bite.

“When you see how they move underwater with small twitches, it’s different to any other jerkbait,” Wood explained. “They just eat it.”

The Reddick carried most of the load across the two nights, but the Dr. Shad still played a role—particularly during the wind-affected first session, where a couple of fish refused the Reddick but committed to the shad profile.

The ability to switch seamlessly between the Redic and Dr. Shad, pairing each with purpose-built Samaki rods, was a major advantage.

Rod, Line & Leader: The Samaki System

While lure choice grabbed the spotlight, their hardware system was just as dialled.

Redic Setup

• Rod: Samaki Zing Extreme V3 6’11’’ BMH

• Action: Moderate-fast with a soft tip for long casts and exceptional hook-retention

• Line: X-Braid Upgrade PE3

• Leader: Stepped up to 66lb fluorocarbon for this event due to fish aggression and heavy structure

• Dr. Shad / Swimbait Setup

• Rod: Samaki 7’4’’ BMET Swimbait Rod

• Line: PE3

• Leader: 66–77lb fluorocarbon depending on lure size

“We’ve had literally zero failure,” Lowry said. “The X-Braid Upgrade is insanely thin, handles abrasion, and lets us pull fish out of trees.”

For anglers studying their system, one thing stands out: Team Samaki fish heavy—and the fish don’t mind.

The Weights: Some of the Heaviest Ever Seen

The numbers tell the story of just how brutally effective their approach was.

Team Samaki cracked the 100kg mark early, an extraordinary benchmark in itself. But by the end of two nights, they had climbed into the 130kg range, one of the biggest winning tallies recorded for the two-night Faust round.

• Night 1: Their biggest bag ever recorded in this event

• Night 2: Another massive session, topping 68–72kg

Incredibly, they released multiple 96–98cm fish—fish that would normally be prized upgrades—because they simply couldn’t break into their mountain of bigger barra.

“We were literally throwing back 98s thinking they were upgrades,” Wood said, still shaking his head at the absurdity of it.

Learning From the Best — and Staying Ahead

Tommy Wood is well known across the country as one of Australia’s leading forward-facing sonar anglers. So it was particularly humbling, he said, to be “schooled” earlier in the season by Jacob Wheeler and the U.S. anglers when the fish were holding deep.

But that humility has since become fuel.

“It opened another door for all of us,” Wood said. “Next year when the Americans come back, we’ll be ready to give them a whoopin’.”

Their commitment to evolving their technique is one of the reasons Team Samaki continues to sit at the elite end of the BARRA Series.

A Three-Peat, a Final-Round Victory & a Fitting Finish

Winning three Samaki rounds in a row is a monumental achievement. Winning while being the naming sponsor adds even more sweetness. And winning with one of the heaviest two-night tallies ever recorded on Faust cements Team Samaki’s legacy even further.

While they narrowly missed the Team of the Year title, they closed the season by taking the final trophy of the tour—keeping it on Australian soil.

“It feels good to keep that last trophy here,” Wood said. “The Americans were on fire this year—Carl, Gussy, Wheeler, Tim—they smashed it. So this one meant a lot.”

For Josh Lowry and Tommy Wood, the Samaki round of the 2024 Zerek BARRA Series was more than a win. It was a statement of mastery over one of Australia’s most technical barra arenas, a showcase of lure and rod design working in perfect harmony, and a reminder to the rest of the field that Team Samaki remains one of the most formidable partnerships in tournament barramundi fishing.