Help with Trolling Spreads!?

[Glenn W]

Your spam dribble sounds like a cheap 2:00am info-mercial--- and I alredy have a Gensu knife

[Captain Fred Archer]

You call a wholesale price that dealers only get made available to this membership "Spam dribble"? Your opinion is your opinion, but I'd like to know when the last time was that someone did something like this for SFC members, and especially including you?

You want to hear some Spam drivel? How about this post of yours from 8/20?

"I may not know my ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to catching northern tunas and perhaps the White Boys that I snag are all suicide fish, but I'll tell you one thing - this Carolina boy knows a thing or two about catching wahoos. I am making myself available for the OC Wahoo Rodeo in early September. I will provide all rigs and proven wahoo tackle. Since this will be a small tournament my fee will be limited to covering expenses and a share of the prize money."

Oh, wow, now there's a deal for all the members!

Not one reply on the site.

Our offer still stands, more out of appreciation of the friendship and good treatment from the majority of the fishermen on this site than anything else. I don't give a rat's ass if you buy into that or not. It's just too bad that you feel that you should bad mouth something like this. The money that those who choose to go for it will save is an extreme savings for the average guy and it's stuff like you just dished out that probably keeps others from trying to do this sort of thing and makes people like me choose not to do this type of thing again.

Maybe this IS the dreaded Spam, but it is good spam for the majority here and there are some good lessons to be learned from the post, whether a person buys anything or not.

Sorry to have offended you, Glen.

[tankerfly]

I'm looking at putting some small teasers on my lures after the advice read on here. Mono leaders is no problem, but how do you guys rig it on single strand wire? I fish out of MHC, NC and the have cost me some nice rigs, so I like to use wire when possible. I have crimped wire in with the mono loops to try and toughen them up, but no field test yet. Any tips are appreciated.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Tankerfly,

If you are talking getting bit off or having spreaderbars chewed up, the main culprits, and the worst of them all, are king mackerel and I know you have plenty of them down there. Bluefish can do some serious bar eating too, but the kings are worse, partially because you often find them closer to the tuna, dolphin and wahoo grounds than the blues.

Wherever you encounter them, the smaller, school kings are just murder on plastic lures and mono and these smaller ones in particular seem to go nuts and hit the chasebait, the teasers, the whole shootin' match, or at least part of it.

I'd love to be able to help you here, but this is an area that I've never been able to figure out and my solution has always been to try to avoid the kings, especially those little ones...the big units seem to come in singles and they act like other fish and attack the chasebaits. No prob there.

I used to run all of the chasebaits on single strand wire down in Cabo because of the wahoo. They acted like gentlemen and hit the chasebait only (at least for me they did). The single strand, something around 90# was no problem on the chasebait leaders and didn't seem to bother the other fish. I haywired the hook on and put a haywire loop in the top end to connect to the snap under the last teaser in line on the bars.

Another "bar chopper" that I loved to fish for were the sierra mackerel, similar to Spanish and cero macks, except they get a lot bigger - up to eighteen pounds. This was the main fish the I kept trying to "bulletproof" my bars for, but just couldn't get it done in an acceptable way. I kept fishing them a lot anyway because I loved to catch and eat them. I just put up with my bars getting chopped up and put new squids or even teaser leaders on when I had to. Not a big sacrifice so I could fish these great fish from my point of view.

Okay, if I understood your question right, I've done my best to answer it. Sorry that it wasn't a better answer, but I have to be honest with you. If I got your question wrong, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer you.

[tankerfly]

Thanks for the reply Capt Archer.

I actually haven't trolled any bars yet - just made some up after reading about them. Dad builds bamboo fly rods, so trying to put some of his leftover pieces to use.

I was talking more about running a small teaser in front of a standard lure like in your lure catalog. If you rig on wire, how do you get the teaser to stay in place? For example, I run about 5 feet of monel from my swivel to the hook. Do you just put a small crimp/bead combo on the wire like you would mono? It seems to me that that would create a terrible weak point. Would it be better to run mono to the lure, then wire from the lure head to hook? Do you still run a teaser on an islander/hoo combo?

Thanks for the info. I'm just starting this offshore game after growing up flyfishing near-shore and freshwater. Whole new ballgame!

[Captain Fred Archer]

Tank,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, been editing two books. Nightmare work, but unavoidable.

As far as in-line teasers are concerned, I remind you that I run the Moldcraft Little Soft Bird in front of my surface lures and yes, even in front of ballyhoo sometimes. I only use the little bird, not the bigger models. I also like to run our six squid Little BaitPods in front of lures, especially in mild sea conditions. I also run small, hollow squid teasers a couple of feet in front of my high speed wahoo lures. I believe that the teasers make a big difference in my catches.

When I am running short wire (stainless steel single strand) leaders, I usually rig the Little Bird so that it actually runs on the mono leader, just in front of the snap swivel to the wire. That way I don't have to rig up the bird every time I change lures. If the wire leaders are longer, say four or five feet, I do rig the bird on the wire. I run a small swage that's a bit bigger than the wire diameter onto the wire and then crimp or swage it tightly where I want the bird to stop. Then I slide a small egg sinker or plastic bead onto the wire and then the bird. The sinker or bead provides a smooth, round surface for the rear of the bird to work against.

The other option on wire is to slide an egg sinker on and crush the hell out of the back two thirds of it. This usually gives it a pretty good grip on the wire, but I like using the swage best of all. Don't worry about really swaging it down tight on the wire...it will not hurt stainless unless you kink it.

That's how I do it. Good luck with your experiments!