Using teasers?

[Van Wildonher]

I've never seen them used. How exactly do you use them? Do you just tie them to the back of your boat? Do you add a lure to the back of your "school" with a hook? If so, how do you attach them to a rod? What is best to use? Squid, chuggers, homemade stuff? Is it best to use spreader bars? Or are they only for smaller jigs?

Thanks for any insight.

[pitch bait]

Teasers come in many forms. They can be what ever you want squid chain, single big lure, mullet chain, or which ever you prefer. They can be pulled off the rigger on a reel clamped to something or off a rod or straight off the stern cleat. They are used to attract fish to your boat then the teaser is taken away and replaced with a hook bait also known as a bait and switch. Your teaser is going to vary depending on what type of fish you are targeting. Teaser fishing is very important when billfishing.

[surfincps]

Like pitch bait said...you can turn pretty much anything in your arsenal into a teaser.
One of the best ways for attatching teasers if your putting them off a rod; like a chain, small dredge or spreader bar is to use a snap swivel off the main line. That way you can quickly change out different colours types and the like.
Unless you are fishing for bills and you're just starting out dragging teasers I'd suggest rigging a hooked lure off the ass end of whatever your teaser may be.
For example, say you have a squid chain built up; crimp a snap swivel right off the end of the leader so that it will sit inside the last squid. After that pick your fav lure that will make some commotion like an Ilander Express and rig it with say a foot or 2 of leader with a crimped loop so you can attatch it to the swivel inside the squid.

[Van Wildonher]

Like pitch bait said...you can turn pretty much anything in your arsenal into a teaser.
One of the best ways for attatching teasers if your putting them off a rod; like a chain, small dredge or spreader bar is to use a snap swivel off the main line. That way you can quickly change out different colours types and the like.
Unless you are fishing for bills and you're just starting out dragging teasers I'd suggest rigging a hooked lure off the ass end of whatever your teaser may be.
For example, say you have a squid chain built up; crimp a snap swivel right off the end of the leader so that it will sit inside the last squid. After that pick your fav lure that will make some commotion like an Ilander Express and rig it with say a foot or 2 of leader with a crimped loop so you can attatch it to the swivel inside the squid.

This is what I don't understand... When doing this, how do you attach to the boat/rod? Do you pull the whole thing on the rod? Doesn't seem likely but if so, how do you reel it in?

http://www.williamsonlures.com/produ...reader_bar.php

Looking at that, it seems you connect the one with a hook to your rod with a rubber band and just have the bar tied to the boat. Makes much more sense now that I can see what it looks like.

[TOMMYV]

This is what I don't understand... When doing this, how do you attach to the boat/rod? Do you pull the whole thing on the rod? Doesn't seem likely but if so, how do you reel it in?

http://www.williamsonlures.com/produ...reader_bar.php

Looking at that, it seems you connect the one with a hook to your rod with a rubber band and just have the bar tied to the boat. Makes much more sense now that I can see what it looks like.

Van, Teasers can be run off the rod tip or from a hand line or teaser reel. Most teasers don't have a hook bait attached directly to them because of size a weight. Normal some type of release clip or rubber band is used for a hook bait trailering the teaser. Checkout are bars and teasers; our G3 is a spreader bar that the hook bait is directly attached. G1 and G2's we provide a chaffe gear loop at the end of the last bait for the guys that want to run a separate rod with a hook bait behind the teaser.gteklures.com

[Van Wildonher]

That looks nice.

[gradyfish265]

Due to your location, I am assuming your using a teaser for billfish...?

If so, for white marlin you might want to try tropic star daisy chains, or squid daisy chains in your favorite colors, I would recommend pink and blue/white, but everyone has their own colors they perfer, also location around the world also effects this due to sunlight, water condition,bait of choice and so on.

For blue marlin you would use somethin larger, maybe 12-18" lure, something that will leave a nice bubble trail or will swim in a way it attracts attention to your spread, maybe it splashes well on calm days, or has an erratic swim action and stays down and then pops, they all work well.

Typically a teaser does not have a hook, it is put on heavier mono and used only to bring fish into the spread. Some use it to make a smaller spread look bigger if they are short handed, but more typically it is used to bait and switch to a fish, where the teaser is pulled in and a fresh bait is chucked out to the hungry fish. Pulling the teaser from the fish angers it and makes it furious...the newly pitched bait if placed right...(allowed to float back to the fish's mouth naturally is the typical method) will make the fish strike with fury...game on.

This type of fishing makes it more interactive, and can make for some awesome strikes, but will take some practice. If you just use the teaser to make the spread look bigger, that works too, the bigger the better, it all helps produce more fish in the end.

Teasers can either be fished off a flatline handline from the transom, or off a teaser reel from an outrigger. Either way, someone needs to watch the teaser at all times if you plan to bait and switch, even if you do not it is a good idea to watch it for trailing fish.

[offshore nut]

For white marlin I like to use green and pink moldcraft squid chains (5 or 7 squids) off the bridge teasers, and two dredges off the corners.

For Blue marlin I like to pull big lures such as moldcraft senior wide range or black bart breakfast off the bridge teasers, and a bowling pin teaser and/or a fender teaser off the corners.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Teaser fishing is a simple art and a blast and half way to fish, due to what we call "the sight bite". That refers to the fact that on surface teasers, you actually see the fish come and attack the teasers and done right, get to watch them actually eat the "pitch bait", which is the one with the hook in it that you toss behind the teaser that the fish was after. They usually jump all over the pitch bait out of frustration and anger over not being able to grab one of the hookless teasers, or after it has been removed from the water if the fish refuses to "switch".

Plus teaser fishing the right ways is very a very selective style of fishing, in that you only catch fish that you choose to bait. So, if you are after marlin and a pod of tunas comes up that you aren't interested in, or that can be huge time wasters if you are in a marlin tournament and don't want to have anything to do with tuna and the time it takes to catch them, you don't pitch a bait to them. Likewise, if you happen to be in a "biggest tuna" kind of tournament and there are a lot of smaller ones around, or even marlin, you simply don't bait and hook them and instead, keep trolling until the right size tunas show up. (A very good thing in this case is that the pod of smaller tunas trying to eat the teaser bar makes them great "teasers" of their own for attracting bigger tunas up top, pushing the little guys aside and you can pitch to and catch the big ones. This actually happens quite often and we and others have won major tuna tournaments exactly this way.)

There is a huge amount of information and illustrations and instructions in my books about this kind of fishing - far more than I could ever cover here. Of course, all details concerning handling, running and everything else about teasers and modern teaser fishing are included in the books.

Here are a couple of shots of just a few different SuperBar and Spider teaser bars, plus a look at how you run and bait fish with them from the books.

Website www.FredArchersWorldofFishing.com