Not Our Day East

[SaltyDog]

Got to post the good and the bad...Took the little boat and went East yesterday in The Kerry Lynne, my 20 ft GradyWhite. Headed out the new cut in chatham and had lines out in 15 minutes... Tons of whales and bait. Marked tuna but it was just not our day. Not really any surface feeds as they seemed to stay deep all day except to come up for the strike. A number of boats hooked up with some nice fish so we pounded hard and just enjoyed the zero wind and fog conditions. I tried all the colored bars, xraps, mackeral, but nothing worked. Even tried putting some mackeral on a deep planer, NC style, to try to get it "deep" where they were but no luck. As much as it sucked to not get a fish it was great to be out for the first time this year.

[Cape Fisherman]

How are you rigging your mack behind the planer?

[Oro]

There's a good chance that your rigged mackerel are not swimming naturally. Damon has an instructional DVD that explains step by step the correct methods to rig a swimming mackerel. It's worth it.
http://www.castafari.com/DVDseries.html

[SaltyDog]

I only pull out the planers when its bottom of the 9th and down to the last few hours. I rig my macks off either 1 or 2 planers about 75-100 yards back from the planer on flourocarbon. One of my tricks with macks/ballyhoo is to use a small surgical staple gun and staple the gill plates, hook opening, and gill underbelly tight to keep them streamline. They swim great and dont spin much. Sometimes I'll put a witch on them to give them a little color but I like to swim the naked for BFT's. I have picked up tips from Damon in the past. He scored 2 fish that day as well...

[idigitu88]

Thanx for the report. Sure beats work

[chumtini]

One of my tricks with macks/ballyhoo is to use a small surgical staple gun and staple the gill plates, hook opening, and gill underbelly tight to keep them streamline.

Here's a new one. For some reason, it sounds creepy. But intriguing
Can you elaborate?

PS I was out east yesterday (thurs). Lot's of mammals. No fish. Zippo, zero, nadda.

[GreenPondEd]

Out east thursday, buddy's boat. 72.5" at 10:30am, spreader bar in 170' of water. He has a GC, so back he went. So close! Better luck next time.
We fished around the whales, but this hit came out of nowhere. Classic yakking on the phone when zzzzzzzzzzzzzz..... "gotta go! fish on!"