Ocean City and SquidNation question

[phile10]

Im planning on doing some offshore fishing this summer and we are looking to update our tackle. We are primarily fishing out of Ocean City and looking for tuna.

Heres the question. i wanna give squidnation some business because they always offer great deals to board members and gives plenty of advice, but what should i get for tuna fishing out of ocean city

We want to have 4 bars with varying colors, we currently have a blue and white squid bar and are looking to have about 3 more. i know for a fact we want to use the rasta colors in one, so that leaves 2 more bars. What other colors would you suggest, would shell squid work just as well? how well do they hold up...

If anyone wants to chime in feel free
Thanks
Phil

[phile10]

Also forgot to ask, how many of each should we run on each bar? and what sizes of squid do you all suggest...

[POON MAN]

I have pulled the Rasta's with great sucsess

Ask bill if you can have him build it on one of our bars ,,you won't be dissapointed

also the staff at all tackle will build you what ever you want

[FINRAZOR RODS]

Rastas and naturals... and dont forget the teasers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Capt-D]

blue and white, rastas, green, and natural are all good colors, however run multiple bars of the same color. stagger all four up the middle and surround them with meat (ballys or strip baits) skirted with witches and hawaiian eyes. keep all of the witches and hawaiian eyes all the same color or shades of color (ie if blue is the theme run some blue and whites(crystal), blue and green, etc.). They will come and with multiples at that!

-D

[phile10]

Any preference for OC fishing...

right now im thinking 9"s with a 12" out the back for the rastas.

for the shell squid...i didnt know if 12 all around was too big or if we should run something smaller like the 7inches.

what are the advantages to the smaller sizes versus the larger if any?

i think thats my main problem right now is figuring out which size squid to get...

[Squidnation]

thanks for the opportunity. Rasta has been a good color and bar for us in OC. We prefer to run the 9 inch but have had success on the 7 inch as well. particularly inshore tuna fishing. The 7 inch rasta has produced what I would consider abnormally high numbers of small yellow fin and decent bluefin on the twins wrecks and Jackspot. Careful though - first sign of bluefish either get going really fast or switch to ceder plugs. Last year we were coming home from a shark trip on the pimple and couldn't make more then 11 knots becuase of the heavy head sea. So we decided to put out the small bars with heaving hooked baits for stability. I think we were able to avoid the bluefish and actually caught 4 bluefins and to our suprise one BLT yellowfin crossing over the spot.

Offshore we typically stick with the 9 inch squids unless we know their are big eyes around and then put out some 12 inch squids. Our Biggest yellowfins of the year luckily came during the MSSSA tunament last year on a quadrople header of 80 and 78lb yellowfins. They came on the 9 inch Green insert clear squid chain and the 9 inch green insert clear bar. We actually had a 3rd big fish that pulled due to crimp failure and a fourth smaller fish that we pulled off at the gaff.

I try to always run the same color bar and the same color hooked bait with slight differences. For instance I will run green spread the consists of the green insert clear squids with a green seawitch one bar, a green and black ilander on another bar, a green machine on another bar, and various combo of greens on the remainder of the spread. One bait will be blue and white, black and purple or pink.

I use to run teasers that consisted of the same squid in a chain. I know run the teasers in the teaser position but but a hooked bait on the end.

I would say that the most consistent color that has produced for us aside for the rasta has been the naturelle and the squid vicious (pearl). Might be an unfair assessment though becuase we did use the squid vicious quite a bit last year since it was new squid and we were doing quite a bit of testing different patterns with it. But it did catch quite a few fish.