HEY BOX! HOW 'BOUT...

[Glenn W]

Need to chime in before the bar gets blown up like some well known kitty cat from a different thread. These are only my OPINIONS and the OPINIONS of a few others that I hold in high regard.

First - since we are talking billfish here lets pull the shot gun way in. No "way backs" needed. Not because it is not effective. But more so because it is difficult to hook one from way back there. See I think that most people will tell you meat, meat, meat for billfishing but won't explain why. It's no secret that plastic raises more billfish then meat or else no one would pull teasers. Hell life would be easy to hop on a boat and pull 4 dink baits to catch billfish. But rarely does that happen. Check out what all the meatlovers deploy first when billfishing.

1. Dredges - Full of either meat (mullet or ballyhoo), or Rubber shads or strips of, wait for it......................PLASTIC STRIPS WITH FISH PICTURES TAPED on to them!!!!!

2. What goes out second - Squid chains or some cases bars BUT NOT HOOKS. or big lures the size of tld 25's that create showers and spray and bubbles and blah blah blah. WHY do we pull all this crap. Well because they raise the fish. Don't get me wrong I feel that a properly rigged spanish mackeral may be the best white marlin teaser there is but the typical rec guy is not going to bring along more then 1 or 2 macks and they do wash out quickly.

Now for the business end. Naked Dink ballyhoo with a 7 or 8/0 VMC or eagle claw circle hook on 60-100lb test leader with a 75lb swivel. Done, end of story. Why? because if presented properly these billfish weather it be a 40lb white, 25lbs sail or 400lb blue will come off a teaser and attack that little ole ballyhoo like it is their last meal and you will have a beautiful uncluttered hook waiting to find the corner of that billfishes mouth. If you are in an area with lots of blues maybe try a med/lg bally with the #8/0 circle hook.

Billfishing isn't unlike the bar scene - You tease em in with the plastic (gold cards, amex, visa etc) but you get the job done with da meat

Everything you really need to know about catching White Marlin and Sail fish right there---- Book sales and Magazine article fees have just gone to shit.
Pretty work Bill.

[jbones11]

A MILLION DOLLAR FISHING TIP, FOR FREE!

[pitch bait]

BIll, I agree somewhat. But at the end of all that plastic, on the business end is MEAT. Squid chain with bally at the end. Mullet dredge inside rubber fish (sometimes) outside always meat. If you are looking for the crash bite at 7 or 8 knots, then you can get away with plastic. I believe that if you are going to be limited with what you can do and only fish a couple of baits plastic or dead I would say that hands down you have the best chance at catching a marlin on a naked dead bait.

[Squidnation]

BIll, I agree somewhat. But at the end of all that plastic, on the business end is MEAT. Squid chain with bally at the end. Mullet dredge inside rubber fish (sometimes) outside always meat. If you are looking for the crash bite at 7 or 8 knots, then you can get away with plastic. I believe that if you are going to be limited with what you can do and only fish a couple of baits plastic or dead I would say that hands down you have the best chance at catching a marlin on a naked dead bait.

I never said put a hook in any of the plastic. after rereading I think It may be misinterperted when I said big lure. One thing I learned from Karl on the Espadon and Howard on the tunabite and butch on the prime time is the effectiveness of a single BIG hookless lure. I have never seen anyone put meat behind a big breakfast or moldcraft wide range. I do use a lg bally behind my squidchain or bar.

[Captain Fred Archer]

Uh oh! You guys are getting kinda close to the awful, terrible, horrible (especially if you are a victim of that robber of anything new and better, The Tradition Monster!)

My new marlin book is based on watching and studying literally thousands of marlin (stripes, blues, blacks and whites) and sails and of course a lot of other fish from my way up there tuna tower for many years down in that incredible billfish venue and billfish "classroom", Cabo San Lucas, come into the spread, react to the lures, hit or miss or ignore them, etc. Encouraging me to pay even closer attention than what I would normally pay to all of this, which was one helluva lot because to me, a trolling spread is one of the most exciting things on earth to watch and not the boring one that many think of it as, was the fact that the lures, bars, etc. in those spreads were any and all of "the best". The reason for that is that I was designing, building and tweaking my own lures and comparing them and the results I got and writing them down.

It's all in this book. And no doubt about it, it is the most controversial book ever written on fishing of any kind. It's all there; the what, the how, the when, the where, the patterns, the pros, the cons...all of it.

It is an e-book. It is 159 pages long. You shouldn't read it if you are all bound up and blinded by tradition, have a closed mind, are satisfied with (maybe) a 33% hookup ratio on plastic lures, you think that the sun rises and sets on ballyhoo, or have a bad heart.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Be back with where and how you can buy it shortly.

Meanwhile...