The Drone Spoon (rigging and fishing)

[Crazy Eyes]

Haven't done any spanish fishing in quite a few years but hopefully can get the kids(6 and 3) out of MHC next week for a little action. I will probably run a couple of handlines which the kids should enjoy.

Probably troll around out front and down the beach, any recent reports out of MHC on the small stuff.

[calebw]

Haven't done any spanish fishing in quite a few years but hopefully can get the kids(6 and 3) out of MHC next week for a little action. I will probably run a couple of handlines which the kids should enjoy.

Probably troll around out front and down the beach, any recent reports out of MHC on the small stuff.

Get out of the inlet fairly early. Look for birds, the spanish were everywhere. Saw most near the dead tree hole.

[Captain Fred Archer]

The Drone spoon is a fish killer of the First Order no matter where you fish with it. It catches 'em all, including lots of wahoo and other toothy critters that can't hurt it, as long as it's on short wire. I used to feel sorry for Mr. Huntington, who was one very fine fellow, because his lures lasted so long without being damaged by bad-assed fish. Because of the nature of this rig, you also stand a very good chance of landing the chawdoggies on it too, but if there were wahoo around, I opted for the wire. This was mostly down south, where I was mostly after wahoo with it. Up north all we wanted were tunas - $$$$$.

It's hard to believe, but so far I haven't seen what used to be this, one of we pinhookers' deepest, darkest secrets discussed here. Could it be that to this day it has remained hidden away in secret places and only used when there was no one else around? I dunno, but I'll tell you what, what follows is a deadly, deadly, deadly way to catch deep tuna of all kinds.

Like most good rigging, it is simplicity itself...it consists of a Drone that is roughly the same size as whatever bait the fish are focused on. I am talking finbait here, usually sand eels, herring, anchovies, bunker, saurs, cigars, whatever. We just used the plain silver models. Run it on a short leader of whatever pound test you like (we didn't have flurocarbon and all that fancy stuff back in the day and if the tuna weren't too big, we sometimes didn't even use leader at all).

Now, here's the complicated, "fancy" part . Slide a big, heavy egg sinker on the leader in front of the Drone. Base the weight on current, drift speed and how deep the fish are. You now have one of the finest jigging (yo-yo style for the most part) lures that I have ever seen. Just drop it down among the bait and the tunas, pump it a few times if it doesn't get bit on the sink, and you'll be on!

The fish usually gobble the whole spoon down when they take it and many times you'll hook them way good, so no pull offs. And not only does the spoon body itself act as "chafe gear" against tuna or gator teeth, the sinker does too, so the leader wear that you might expect just doesn't happen. Of course, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't check it after each fish.

The welded eye that Gotta Fly pointed out (clever lad) allows the spoon to have all of the fluttering action that it would have without the sinker. And a fast sink isn't a bad sink, although you should experiment with sinker sizes and sink rates on a given day or night.

I suppose that you could rig up a chromed sinker to "fancy" the rig up a bit, but we didn't bother with that...just a regular, drab, grey colored sinker got the job done and done well.

Like I said, we murdered the fish with this rig and that included some major bigeye and bluefin - the ones that we were mostly after because of their value with the sushi buyers of the day (Yoshi, at Colabella's back then). And because of that, we never told anyone else about it...it was just too good a money maker!

And remember, back in the day we didn't have fish finders and all of that to tell us where and how deep the fish were, so we had to wing that and it still worked great. It's scary, thinking of the damage that could be done with today's sonars and this deadly trick!

Standard practice was to dump one or two when we got a troll bite, especially if they were bigeye and especially if it was on the night troll, when we caught a lot of them. This produced a lot of valuable, bonus fish. We also used to hang one off the down current rigger while chunking or swordy fishing and let the 'rigger rock 'em and sock 'em. And don't be surprised if one of those deep biters winds up being a swordy!

Hope ya try it...but don't tell anybody where you heard about it - there might still be some of those old pin hooker buddies of mine around and if they knew that I let the cat out of the bag, they'd probably come out here after me! "Run, I mean, stagger, Fred, stagger fast!"

[Capt_John]

I've used drone spoons as long as I can remember for kings, wahoo, and grouper both commercially and recreationally. I usually pull (2) #3 1/2 spoons on #4 and #8 planers for kings and wahoo. And a #12 or #24 for grouper. I rig them with 50-60' of 100lb. mono tied directly to the spoon and two snap swivels coming from the planer. I pull them around 6 knots for kings, 7-8 knots for hoos in Oct., and 4-5 knots for grouper. My favorite colors are chrome, white w/ silver flash, black w/ green flash, black w/ pink flash, and pink w/ chartreuse flash.

[captwally]

Ahh, the spoon. So many uses and yet such a simple idea. We call it " the hardware" because of it's ruggedness. For the most part, if we are going offshore, it is rigged on #7 wire with about 80' of 80#-130# mono. Otherwise, if we are fishing for kings and bonito, it is on 80' of 60#-80# mono with no wire but sometimes with 10'-20' of flouro. We fish this rig on #4, #6, or #8 planers in line on rods with 100# power pro/braid. We catch a lot of fish on these rigs but lose the spoons once in a while. The favorite for the area is the silver 3 1/2 Drone spoon with blue tape, the 40# wahoo we got today was on this rig. Besides the bigger fish we get on spoons, we also use spoons for baitfish. The smaller Clark spoons are great for catching "bullet bonito", blue runners, and spanish and cero mackerel. That's just what we use them for. Go inshore or fresh water and there is a whole other world of spoon fishermen. Regardless of where you fish, the spoon is probably the second best lure/bait there is next to the jig. Where ever you fish and what ever you fish for most fish will eat a spoon. Good Luck!

[captwally]

Oh yeah, a ball bearing swivel is a must. If you are fishing it on a planer, and you don't use one between the planer and the spoon, you will end up with a tangled mess.

[Henrique38]

For you spoon users, which do you like better, the Clark spoon or the Drone spoon?

[James80]

Great info so far, seems spoons with planers is it.

I took my nephew out for the TTGFA Junior Angler Tournament last Saturday. He caught his first Carite (Spanish Mackerel) on a 2 1/2 spoon with a pink flash. 3lb fish on a 2 1/2 spoon.

[James80]

What about putting the swivel in front of the spoon? Like you would on a jig.

[clt_capt]

For you spoon users, which do you like better, the Clark spoon or the Drone spoon?

I like them both. Typically different targets. For Spanish, I try to match the hatch - I'll usually start out with a mix of gold and silver #0 and #00 Clark spoons - Once I see a pattern to the strikes, I'll put out just that size/color. The newer Clark spoons with mylar seem to be the heat - Pink is very effective for me recently.

I tie them directly to 20 lb fluorocarbon - more for abrasion than anything else.

For kings I prefer drone spoons. Plain silver is good, but pink is my most effective color. I'll use a short wire trace, then mono to the planer... Basically the same for offshore as well.