How fast can you troll a birdie?

[Captain Fred Archer]

Jared,

I am a huge believer in the power of birds and other in-line teasers as far as turning fish on is concerned, especially non-feeders. You will find a Moldcraft Little Soft Bird in front of any and all of my trolling lures, with a few exceptions that I'll mention here.

First, as far as speed is concerned, the little Moldcrafts will handle fourteen knots with ease. The only requirement is that you keep the line angle low at that kind of speed, which means off of flatlines, clipped down to flatline clips, or off of UpRiggers. When it comes to the long riggers, they should be run far enough back so that they run right. You can also accomplish this and fish them closer by running the release clip down on the 'rigger a little.

True high speed trolling is too much for birds, but I wouldn't dream of running a high speed lure (note that I am not calling this a wahoo technique - that's because all kinds of fish go after and catch lures trolled at eighteen knots) without an in-line teaser. We have run many side-by-side tests of the exact same high speed lures with and without teasers and those with the teasers have BURIED those without them.

Some picts of high speed lures follow with the teasers that I like to use on them, small, 3" hollow squids rigged no more than 12" in front of them. The squids are secured on the wire via a small egg sinker, stopped by a swage just a bit bigger than the wire diameter firmly swaged on the wire. (Please, no one worry about the swage causing the wire to break...it doesn't or I wouldn't be fishing with it. Kinking breaks single strand, not compression of a swage.)

That's it from my corner. Now some picts from Wahoo Troller's Bible. In the picture with the numbers, one shows the squid, one shows the swage stopper (the squid has slid up the leader) and the third one doesn't matter in this discussion. Several sizes of our wahoo lures shown, one uncut for regular trolling and then cut down for high speed fishing. Last one is a big honker.