Mixed spread thoughts/advice

[mscontender]

I fish out of Orange Beach, AL in the norther gulf of mexico. We are blessed to have quite a variety of fish all summer, blues, whites, sails, tuna etc... Most of our fishing is fun fishing but we do fish 3-4 tournaments a year. I troll out of a triple engine CC

Question is, unlike some places that are covered in one species ie whites, sails or blues making lure/pattern choice easier, I try to cover all my bases

A typical setup for us might be a bowling pin/fender teaser off each corner, large 14" flat line lures (super chugger, wide range, ruckus etc..) followed by a short and long riggers of small wide ranges, small 1656 angle and flat face and or Pakula sprockets some 12" and or 9", joe yee med plunger etc.. we usually add a shotgun jet or small non smoking lure.

Am I over complicating things? Or is this a fair setup given that I am just as likely to have a shot at a blue as a small white or YF? Am I hurting myself by trying such a buffet of lures?

Thoughts?
I appreciate the knowledge and wisdom on this forum, thanks!

Robert

[Bwana Bill]

I try to cover all my bases

A typical setup for us might be a bowling pin/fender teaser off each corner, large 14" flat line lures (super chugger, wide range, ruckus etc..) followed by a short and long riggers of small wide ranges, small 1656 angle and flat face and or Pakula sprockets some 12" and or 9", joe yee med plunger etc.. we usually add a shotgun jet or small non smoking lure.

Am I over complicating things? Or is this a fair setup given that I am just as likely to have a shot at a blue as a small white or YF? Am I hurting myself by trying such a buffet of lures?

Thoughts?

sounds like a decent enough spread for blues and whites along with the by-catch of sails, tuna, big dorado, and wahoo (but if i were targeting GOM sails specifically, my whole spread wouid be completely different)

i would suggest throwing some meat in there every once-in-while....... ilander/ballyhoo comination

i wouldn't put too many 14"+ lures out there and for the shotgun i'd suggest a bird-and-a-turd..... or at least a bird and whatever

past that, there's nothing realy wrong with your choice of lures because billfish aren't always the norm in the GOM and if you manage to raise just 1 blue in, oh say, every 30hrs of trolling you're doing damn good imo

also, fishing out of Orange Beach, you oughta give swordfishing a try sometime...... they're out there for sure

and oh yeah,.... dragging a single bowling pin?....... pointless imo...... i'd go with 5 or 6 on a chain or not-at-all

and the toad works great for me in the GOM with a 12" slant in close to it

good luck

[Captain Fred Archer]

I'm with B'Wana on the Toad teaser...just one, down the middle. I fished spreaderbars almost exclusively (even in front of "marlin" or "tuna" lures, instead of birds or other teasers...if you read any of my stuff, you know that I believe in teasers) and since each bar has a bunch of teasers on it, my spreads were loaded with them. An important point was that the teasers on my bars were the same size as the most plentiful bait in the area at the time I was fishing.

One thing that can cause confusion in multiple species areas (actually pretty common) is attempting to adjust lure sizes to fish sizes - figuring that big lures will catch big fish and little lures will catch little ones, etc. If you've fished offshore enough, you know that some mighty big fish will hit some mighty small lures and that the opposite is true. I believe the reason is what I mentioned above - that most big game fish, pretty much regardless of size, feed on the most abundant type of bait in the area. And the bottom line is that small bait is usually far more abundant than big bait. I'll spare you the detailed discussion of that.

This situation includes big stuff like blue marlin, which at times will also eat smaller tunas and dorados, etc. that are feeding on the small "average" bait. Because of that my goal was to run lots of lures that matched the size (not so much the colors) of the primary bait in the area in the bulk of my pattern, with a lure or two behind the smaller stuff that I hoped represented the average size small predator fish that might be feeding on the ones in the main spread. This type of spread appealed to a broad diversity of game fish, providing maximum action for our charter customers, which is what most were looking for.

In my mind and experience, it all goes back to that basic, basic, basic, "Match the hatch - make the catch"...it amazes me how many fishermen seem to ignore that simple, yet logical and powerful rule, thus making the catching side of the equation a lot more difficult than it should be.