What leader for marlin lure?

[ScubaSteve]

Hello, Can someone give me some advise on how heavy leader I should use to rig 12" marlin lure (i.e. 12" Senior Wide Range or 12" Marlin Magic). I have floro leader material. But what pound test should I use for trolling in East Cape for Blue Marlin? Thanks.

[O-SEA-D]

300-400 lb test

[DROPBACK]

We use 530 X-Hard Momoi on anything intended for a BM. Caught 2 in the last 2 weeks. One on a all pink express and one yesterday on a b/w express (both with horses). The 530 is the heat boatside. If you pull off a BM on the 530 you were'nt intended to catch it. Most of the boats in our fleet are all pulling 530 now.

Karl

[Captain Fred Archer]

Steve,

That's my backyard down there. I used to run 600# leaders on my blue marlin stuff, which is every lure you troll when they are around - more blues are probably caught on 8-10" lures than the bigger models down there and in a lot of other places, so it is important that you rig the whole spread for blues, not just one or two lures that you think that they are going to bite. That Moldcraft Wide Range is one helluva blue catcher, especially in black, purple and silver (skipjack). Green and yellow, blue and white and, if they still make it, the orange/yellow/black one they call "bleeding mackerel". The Senior Super Chugger is also mighty good.

There is one huge variable that you are going to have to take into account fishing the East Cape - tackle. We fished for the big blues the right way, with lures rigged correctly and fished off of at least 80 and the vast majority of the time 130 two speed Accurates on heavy, bent butt IGFA class trolling rods that were fished out of a Release Marine Unlimited Fighting Chair with a bucket harness. This is the right stuff for big blues and blacks. It is also expensive - about $20,000 worth in the case of the 130's and chair.

You will not find that kind of gear on any East Cape charterboat that I have ever heard of and in fact, not many Cabo boats (there is more sophisticated fleet there) carry that kind of gear - but some certainly do and these are the guys who lay a licking on the blues - especially the big ones.

It doesn't really help if you brought your own 80's and/or 130 outfits, like many do for the big marlin tournaments down there (run out of Cabo for by far the most part), because that is chair tackle and I doubt that you could find a real, safe, 130 class chair and bucket on the Cape to fish that class gear out of. If you want to or are willing to fight blue marlin standing up and you have four 80# rigs, you might want to consider taking them.

Much East Cape and for that matter, Cabo gear is sketchy at best. You can probably forget about finding a boat with a full set of functional 80's full of fresh line. You can also pretty much forget about the 80 or 130 class chair and harness. The rods will not be IGFA trolling models, they will be stand up tuna rods. If you are using the boat's gear the drags will be way below where they should be because the crews are afraid of breaking lines and losing lures and line. Increasing the drags to where they should be fished is an exercise in futility on most Mex boats. Even if the crew lets you do it, they will change them back in a heartbeat.

You might be able to find a bigger Cabo charterboat campaigning on the Cape for a while, but this is quite rare.

Regardless of what kind of boat you charter, make it clear that there are to be no changes to your lure rigging and leader because the first thing they will try to do is cut off your heavy leader and replace it with some light stuff that they use regularly, your swages will be replaced with a knot that they favor down there and your hook/hooks will probably get changed over to smaller hooks and mono rigging that the first big wahoo to come along will slice and dice for you.

I strongly recommend a single hook stiff rig for the blue marlin lures. I personally really like the new Hays Stainless Hooks for my blue marlin stuff.

I have a friend down there right now who is fishing seven straight days exclusively for blue marlin. I was supposed to go down with him, but some things came up that prevented that. In his case, he started with a quality charterboat out of Cabo and the plan was to fish the local, hot blue marlin spots on the way up the Sea of Cortez, working other known blue spots like the Gordo Banks and Los Frailes on the way up to the East Cape. They slept onboard and planned to fish swords for at least a couple of nights when they were in prime swordfish locations. They will wind up at the East Cape if the fish are there and my buddy George will leave Mex from there. He got eight blues on this same trip at the same time last year, including an eight and a nine hundred pound fish. All were released. That's good blue marlin fishing anywhere! He should be back soon and I'll report on his trip.

There is blue marlin fishing and there's fishing where there are blue marlin. There is a huge difference in tackle, boat and crew. There is a lot of the latter down in The Baja and especially the East Cape during the summer and fall blue marlin months. We once did twenty-seven blues and a black, along with a lot of other fish in only seven days straight at exactly this time of year down there. That never would have happened if we hadn't been fishing the kind of gear. (By-the-way, all of those marlin were caught on the same lure, a custom skirted Legend Lures Andromeda made by Roddy Hays.)

Not everyone can mount a full-fledged blue marlin hunt down there, even though it is probably the least expensive place in the world to do so (Kona is another good one for this), so if you are heading down to The Cape on a family trip, relax, enjoy yourself and enjoy the amenities and the aura of the area and if you are going soon, by all means bring some blue marlin lures, put them on the biggest stuff on the boat and hope for a couple of the smaller versions.

Last thought. Blues run down there during the summer and fall months. The rest of the year it is striped marlin, which are like a big white in many ways.

I hope that this helped some and didn't discourage you. I'm just trying to give you the straight skinny.