Originally Posted by
Captain Fred Archer
"Ya gotta find 'em before you can catch 'em, no matter what kind, where, or how" is the very first law of fishing as far as I'm concerned. And it is probably the single most ignored rule of them all. We had to abide by that rule in Cabo, just as one should anywhere else, plus we had quite restrictive limits on meat fish and it could be a hassle handling and releasing bunches of them, and that included marlin many times. And big tunas in particular beat folks up, that happened a lot, and we had to find a way to actually avoid the cows many times.
So, we started bait & switch fishing long ago and it became our way preferred way to fish for me, my crew and our passengers. Once the latter saw how effective and exciting it was, they fell in love with it too. And we always advised them to keep a fish or two short of the limits in case a way bigger version of that species showed up so that we could bait and box it.
Those huge Cabo bull mahi's that I have been posting pictures of were a good example. Many times we caught plenty of really nice, 25-40 pounders, but likewise many times a monsta would show up later on the bar teasers while we were fishing for other stuff and if we weren't limited we could catch and keep it. Ditto on the tunas. Both really raise on and get all fired up over the bar teasers.
And the striped marlin, whitey's kissin' cousin, also raised in pods and we could literally hook them up one at a time and one after another as each got hooked and ran from the boat. Since there is no need to remove the teasers after each fish got hooked, the other marlin almost always stayed after them and got picked off. And, if we didn't want anymore marlin, which was often the case, we and our passengers used to get to watch them freaking out, chasing the bars, until they got bored and went away.
I make no secret that I have a real love affair for wahoo - big ones, little ones, and humongous, world record class ones that are a fact and constant possibility in the waters of The Baja. At first I thought that this bait & switch thing wouldn't work on them, but short and sweet, I found out pronto that it did. Once one or a pack of them comes we almost always caught them.
Now, Cabo is live bait city. EVERYBODY but us used to pitch live bait to anything and everything and most still do. (That has finally changed lately as more and more crews switch over to ballyhoo, but they were an unheard of bait for a very long time. Hard to believe, I know, but absolutely true.)
And live bait works, but we vastly preferred doing "the pitch and twitch (if the twitch was needed, which it usually wasn't) on wahoo and everything else. The truth is that it was the same back then and there as it is now with certain techniques...I was known as "that crazy gringo using those east coast techniques that don't work here" or the reverse on the east coast nowadays.
I actually liked that back there and then because it was my competitors saying that and I actually hoped that they didn't start using stuff like ballyhoo and bars and downriggers, planers and Spiders and bait & switch fishing and such. Now that I am trying to teach new things in old places around the world, that sort of "won't work here stuff" gets pretty frustrating, but in the final analysis, it makes me no nevermind if some fishermen simply refuse to learn new things...it is the nature of the beast in many cases.
A rule for us was to always have a couple of rigs with the short, single strand leaders that I insist on ready to pitch if the chawdawgies showed on the teasers. And my crew was trained to only pitch wire on wahoo...and if they didn't recognize wahoos when they showed and pitched mono leader and it got clipped, it was their last ride on my boat.
I paid top dollar to my crews and the tips were usually outstanding, so they got very, very good at identifying incomer 'hoos. In fact, I can only recall two incidents when a mate pitched mono on teased wahoo. Both were by the same guy who did it twice in a row during the same hot wahoo bite and he got clipped both times. I actually stopped fishing and took him back to the marina, dumped him off, and we went back and caught a few more.
Like all bait & switch fishing, it is actually quite simple, but one has to pay attention to the teasers and what kind and of course the size of fish they raise. Not a big deal, unless your crew prefers drinking beer, shooting the shit, and nodding off until a clicker goes off - ho hum!
Like Wound Up James, who I really respect as a wahoo catcher, not just a wahoo fisherman, we did a good deal of downrigger fishing, usually on specific wahoo stucture. Here too we were considered "crazy" by the locals, but as it was with the other different things that we did, that was more than fine with me. But perhaps a bit differently than James (and perhaps not...he is one helluva good wahoo catcher), we usually trolled those same ballyhoo on the d'rigger. The only time we used live bait was after we'd beaten up the fish on a spot with the ballies. Before leaving the structure would we put a livie, the smallest one that we could get, down. I dunno, but we caught a lot of fish on it and I always suspected that the little bait was kind of like a dessert on fish that weren't interested in any more ballyhoo.
Our other downrigger trick is the one that actually worked the best for us - running Spiders deep. And our armed chasebait was a hollow ProSquid, not a dead or live bait. The first reason for that was that we caught a lot of fish on them. The second was that there was no way that a 'hoo could pick or destroy the P'Squid on us and so re-bites without having to check a bait were the norm.
Okay, I'm sure that I have bored some of you enough...and the "It don't work here" gang is probably chomping at the bit to tell me how full of da poop I am, so I'm wrapping this up. It goes without saying that I hope that some of you, the ones to whom this sounds logical and not nuts, give this a try. And when you do, please send pictures. I just love it when that happens.
Just remember, "Ya can't catch 'em where they ain't!"
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High speed troll till you find them and then cover the area with live bait. Use a stinger hook and a short piece of single strand albrighted to your mono. You can also drop the livies out the back when you hook up trolling. Don't forget the irons when droppin back. Sometimes they work better than the live bait.
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