Difference of opinion on trolling

[Captain Michael Buffington]

Turn to the bite immediately. This is the why.
#1 It clears the fish that's on so all the other baits still fish.
#2 It changes the speed of every single bait in the pattern without any change in noise or vibration that can spook the bite.
#3 The fish are coming from that direction. 45 seconds at 6 knots is about 175 yds, why not stay right where they came from to try and fill the spread.
#4 Fish school in circles when spooked. Your making your pattern look like something that is suppose to happen. Running straight away is not what happens in nature. I know every writer has written you must go straight for the last 40 or so years. Doesn't mean that they are right.
Plenty of other reasons but that's enough for now

chicken o the sea dinnerThats my method. The way we did it on troll bites for albies longrange. Turn into the bite and chum the chove. Worked almost every time.

Mike

[buy design]

Great advice. I've tried to remember to turn, but now have a better understanding of why. If I have the right cokpit crew, we will leave the first rod hit alone and every hand on deck start hand jigging the other lines. Fun to feel a YFT rip the line out of your hand.

Jim
Magic Moment
35CC

[sportfishingusa]

I always keep up speed, turn into bite, and if nothing i will throttle down and let the baits sink.. then give it a few more seconds until i knock it back into gear.. i will let the boat jig the meat itself.. notice that has worked to get a few more bites!!


And up here in the ne when we troll we use spreader bars, daisy chains, and such so we put floats in them.. so if i have my bars off the riggers and other lures of the short or long rigger i will free spool them after the hook up with a tuna or whatever not taking much drag and let them back instead of clearing them if it is posibble.. but if not i will just clear and re set! easy to just reset it all!

[striper swiper]

To Greg Manning and others I turn as tight as I can with the spread I have. If you watched a trout rise this will be easy to understand.
When the bite comes they come in and circle back to where they came from. By turning toward that bite you have a much better shot of getting them to go right back at your offering on the turn
Also if you are fishing with just enough drag to keep the line on, the one that's hooked is doing everything to stay with his schoolmates. Giving you a heads up as to where to go next. You won't get that vital info if your spread is set at strike while trolling.
Lastly if as in my case you hook a giant turning instantly will give you a shot at any fish even on a 30. The reason is your already moving to a good chase position. Once you know and it won't be but about 5 seconds after you push to strike. You back off the drag and crank up the gas. Let the fish run hard and just keep the line on the reel. Once the fish starts to circle he is out of oxygen. Knowing that he is going to favor the hook side in his death circle makes it easier to determine which way to move to get to the end game

[Feeding Frenzy Sportfishing]

Maintain and turn into it, this will bring your other baits into the strike zone and trigger multiple hook ups. If nothing else takes, straighten her out, clear the excess lines and settle into the fight...

[canyongear]

Steady as she goes..all hands on deck with a gentle tug on the flats, short and longs..amazing what that little tug will stimulate..right igloo..wrong bar.

[Captain Fred Archer]

I've stayed away from this one because, as usual, my perspective is quite different. But heck, I guess I should toss my two cents in, just like everyone else.

First, let me note that we are talking open ocean pelagic fishes, mostly schooling ones that hunt, track down, and hunt for schools of likewise pelagic (for the most part) bait species. Some baits are quite fast and agile, but the predators are faster. As it is with predators of all kinds and species around the world, Nature has designed them to cull the weak, old, or injured members of schools of bait. In my mind at least, this eliminates the comparison to rising trout, which almost always relate to some form of static cover or current that they dart out of and suck down prey, be it insect or minnow, and then return to their station. No comparison with the ocean species to my way of thinking.

As for turning the spread around, I have watched huge numbers of pelagics attacking various bait species. To my eye, at least, the fin baits like flying fish, ballyhoo, sauries, mullet, etc. try to use their speed and the sanctuary of tightly packed schools to escape predator fish. Part and parcel to this is the physical fact that if a baitfish or school goes into a turn, it must slow down, and slowing down or presenting predators a broadside shot is basically a death sentence for bait. So, they flee the fastest way, which is in a straight line.

So, again from what I have actually observed for many decades, most fin bait tries to outrun gamefish, instead of out-turning it. So, when they're on fin bait and I get bit, I hit the MOB on the chartplotter and I keep on going in my original direction, usually at the same speed that I got bit at and if I don't load up, I crank the mills up some to try to imitate even more panicked baitfish being attacked. That has worked very well for me for a lot of years.

After landing the hooked fish, which is my first priority (to me, a fish on the hook is worth a dozen that haven't been hooked yet), I return to my MOB and if I don't get bit quickly, I begin to hunt up current for the school.

But I have no "always" rule when it comes to this sort of situation, the type of bait being the variable. This is primarily an additional two bait criteria, squid being first and small "whale food" being the second.

Squid rarely run in big, straight, surface-running pods. Instead, they usually "star burst", or break up when driven to the surface by fish or dolphins and immediately scatter and dive. The surface is a very bad place for squid in the daytime and unless they are being balled up by fish or dolpins (not easy for either one of them), they dive quickly to get off the killing grounds. In this case I again immediately hit my MOB and then I keep going at my original speed when the fish come on the bars using the good, old "ten second rule" before pulling the throttles back some. Then, after we land those "in the hand" fish, I turn and return quickly to the MOB where we got bit.

Unlike the case with fin bait, I don't expect to find the squid up top when I return. If they are there, great, but if they're not I pay special attention to the sonar, looking to meter the squid where they are likely and I expect them to be - deep. If and when I do, Spider Dredges are immediately deployed at the same depth as the squid. The gamefish are almost always there with them.

When it comes to the "whale food", the red crabs, baby squids, octopi, cuttlefish, shrimp and various tiny fin baits that tuna of all sizes feed and get locked onto so often (and so many fishermen fail to match the hatch and so don't catch), slow is the name of the game, right from the get-go. This type of bait can't and doesn't swim fast. So, even if you run the little spreaderbars that are pure murder on them, if you troll them too fast or if they don't stay on the surface (more a case of bar weight than floats), you will rarely get bit. In this case you are matching the hatch bait-wise, but not behavior-wise.

Even when trolling at the slower speeds that are best for the tiny baits, I use the same "no turn, go straight" tactic when we start getting bit. This is because most of this type bait, besides being very slow swimmers in the first place, congregate on and along current breaks. The gamefish don't drive and chase them, like the bigger finbaits or squid. Instead, they separate and cruise up and down those same lines that I troll, picking off their victims with ease. So that's where I troll for them.

Good fishermen know what the main forage species that the fish that they are after are feeding on and most likely locked onto. If one isn't confident about what's "on the menu" today, the outlook for a great day is not good. There are several excellent ways of discovering that. This ain't no book and besides, there are some here who just hate reading long posts like this, to say nothing of books, so I'm done with this subject here. There's a lot more in the books, so those who do like to read know where to go.

Just remember, how we handle bites ain't always the same, so neither should our reaction to them be.

Hope this helps some.

[Deep C]

Depends on the line hemorhage... Tackle, size of fish, species, etc... all come into play... I like to keep out what I can as long as I can but there are times thats not the best thing to do...
As mentioned above... Turn into the bite and steam for 30 seconds is a good rule of thumb if say you're on yellowfin or school bluefisn... Then you get other situations... Like at Chub Cay when the blue marlin that just raised didn't read the instruction manual and eat the big bait on the 80w, instead piling on that dink on a tld 25... I'm pretty quick to get off the sticks when that happens...
Then you get the other end of the spectrum where a white eats on the 80w... In that case I keep on steamin until the other baits are cleared. Then if the fish is really out classed by heavy tackle I drop to one engine in, slow and try to leave at least something out. That is something that isn't likely to get in the way if the fish switches directions...

[chumtini]

Got bluefish? Here in New England, those yellow-eyed devils will wreak havoc, especially on spreader bars. The second they attack, stop the friggen boat! If the boat keeps moving, you'll have 10 or 15 of the toothy little bastards hanging on most/all your bars and baits. It gets old fast. And no more floats for me. It keeps the squid bars in the strike zone even after you stop the boat.

Gotta love dogfish too. If you stop the boat long enough, the dogs will destroy those nicely rigged baits in seconds.

Arrrg.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Chum,

You are SO right when it comes to those blue devils. King macks too. Those shredders are the bane of spreaderbars and most other lures and natural baits too. My only answer to them is to avoid areas with them in them. We were very lucky down in The Baja because we had neither. Wahoo (no prob on bars...they hit the chasebait basically exclusively) and sierra mackerel, which dearly loved bars but acted like blues and rat macks and attacked the teasers too, although the rearmost ones only. We loved our sierras, so we simply re-rigged any damaged little squids on the bars. The sierras are basically an inshore species, so we only dealt with them when we wanted some - which was frequently.

I address that hooking up the wrong fish on the wrong gear thing in my post about our way of trolling. It used to be a big problem down south, but simply went away when we started bait and switch bar fishing. The only caveat is that you do have to keep an eye on the spread, but if you aren't doing that anyway...well, I'm gonna be polite and not say anything that might offend.

Bait & switch bar fishing is like a lot of relatively new things. Few are willing to try it at first (circle hooks are a recent example), then some give it a good shot and when they do, I think most will wind up like us and never do the "blind" thing again. Or, maybe not. Makes me no nevermind.

Works like a charm, though, and is a helluva lot of fun to boot.