SETTING THE HOOK WITH LARGE ARTIFICIAL LURES.....

[loaferoatan]

This year was a bust, all good info for next year huh Aaron? Wahoo tournament Oct 20th. We are good at catching those, and at 17kts setting the hook is the easy part.
Kerry

Kerry:
Shame that tournament is on the same dates as the Guanaja one. I'm trying to get as much info as I can to make sure we land the winner up there. Might go with the Bertram that is parked at HMB or Gary, not sure yet. Can't go in my little Grady and fish Guanaja for marlin

Filing down the barb will help to some extent. But if your hooks are too big and the fish are getting billwrapped when they stick their nose into the bend, and/or the drag is so heavy that hooks are being pulled out on the bite, you're still going to have trouble. You didn't mention how large the lures and hooks were, the tackle that was being used nor the size of the fish that were caught and/or lost - you say "large marlin" but how large is large? 300 lb? 400 lb? 500 lb? 600 lb? All these things have a big effect on your catch ratio. Then you need to figure in what sort of drag was being run on the bite and what the angler did after the strike. That makes a difference too. It may well be that not much could have been done to prevent those losses, but we have no idea how those fish were lost - did they not get hooked properly or were they lost during the fight etc - to try and figure that out. If you don't want to give up local secrets, that's cool, but the more info that you can give, the better our chances of being able to offer some useful comments.

lures that are being used range from Joe Yee Super Plunger's to big Black Barts with 11/0 hooks. We're also running some smaller Gary Yamamoto slants with 10/0. One Coggins Tado will be on the short corner with a set of 12/0s. The majority of the marlins landed were in the 200-300 range, but the bigger ones got away (600+). Some shook the hook, others spooled the 50s. Gear is anywhere from Penn 50 wides to 130s

[Patudo]

How did your tournament go guys?

[XpatBubba]

My mother in law left to shop for supplys in FL that week so I had to bow out of the tournament. The boat I was to fish on came in 2nd. First place was "Bonncayon"

[loaferoatan]

How did your tournament go guys?

We had one big hit the first day on a Black Bart. Soon after caught a barracuda on a Braid Marauder running in the prop-wash. After that, NOTHING. Weather hit us pretty hard and hurricane Richard forced the tournament organizers to cancel the rest of the tournament. Can't control the weather. Next Tournament: November 17th, Utila.
A