IVE YET TO SEE A TIP ON GAFFER & BAILER FISHING...SO HERE ARE SOME SMALL THINGS THAT WE DO ON MY RIG ..ONE THING IVE LEARNED OVER THE YEARS IS THAT MAHI CAN SAVE YOUR DAY IN A HEART BEAT.....
GAFFER FISHING....WHEN WE KNOW THE GAFFERS ARE AROUND & WE WANT TO TARGET THEM WE BREAK OUT THE LIGHT GEAR 30S,25S, & TLD 20S.....WE THEN DEPLOY THEM WITH BLUE & WHITE WITCHS & ISLANDERS ON THE LONG RIGGER & NAKEDS ON EVERYTHING ELSE...IF ITS ONE THING A GAFFER CANT RESIST IS A MED NAKED SPLIT BILL..A BIG MISTAKE ALOT OF ANGLERS DO WHEN TARGETING BIG GAFFERS ON A WEED LINE IS STICKING TO THE WEED LINE TIGHT....YA YOU WILL CATCH FISH BUT IF YOU WANT TO CATCH THE BIG BOYG ZIG ZAG OFF THE WEEDLINE MAKE BIG LOOPS OFF OF IT....ALOT OF THE BIGGER GAFFERS WILL STAY OUT SIDE OF THE WEED LINE WAITING TO AMBUSH BAIT SWIMMING OUT SIDE OF IT...ALL THE BIG GAFFER WEVE CAUGHT HAVE BEEN OFF THE WEEDLINE......ANOTHER TRICK TO CATCHING THESE BIG GAFFERS IS A CRAZY ONE WICH I LEARNED FROM A CHARTER BUDDY OF MINE & WHEN I SAW IT I ALMOST FLIPPED OUT....THE FIRST MAHI THAT CAME IN TO THE BOAT DID NOT GET GAFFED.. & AS SOON AS HE HIT THE DECK THE MATE BROKE OUT A BIG HOOK WITH 400LB LEADER STUCK HIM IN THE BACK JUST BEHIND THE HEAD PUT HIM ON AN 80WIDE SET HIM BACK WHERE YOUR FLAT LINES WOULD BE.... I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE FOR A MARLIN WHEN I ASKED HE SAID JUST WATCH...NOT 5 MINS LATER THE GAFFERS CAME IN & COVERED US UP BIG GAFFERS TWO WENT 40 & 42 LBS....HE SAID WHEN THE BIG BOYS ARE AROUND THE WILL ACT JUST LIKE THE BAILERS & THEY DID THATS FOR SURE......
NOW ON TO BAILERS...THIS IS THE EASY PART BUT WHAT KILLS ME IS WHEN THEY STOP CHEWING & THE CAPT GIVES UP & PULLS OFF & LEAVES THEM FOR GOOD...THIS IS A MISTAKE....A FEW TRICKS TO GET THEM GOING AGAIN.....WE WILL PULL OF THE SCHOOL FOR A FEW MINS... EVEN AS MUCH AS 20 MINS....SET OUT SMALL NAKEDS & 5 INCH BLACK & PURPLE CEDAR PLUGS ROLL BACK BY THEM & WHAM ITS ON AGAIN.....IF YOU GIVE THEM A BREAK & SHOW THEM SOMETHING ELSE TO GET THEM EXCITED YOU WILL LOAD THE BOAT...ANOTHER METHOD WOULD BE WHAT WE CALL CHUNK TROLLING WE WILL TROLL THE SCHOLL WITH RODS IN HAND & A CHUNK OF CUT BAIT TROLL SLOW & THEY WILL SUCK IT UP.....NOW MOST OF US KNOW THAT YOU WANT TO KEEP A PRISNOR OVER TO KEEP THE SCHOOL CLOSE BUT TO THE BEGGINERS WHO DONT KNOW WHAT A PRISNOR IS ITS A MAHI KEEP HIM IN THE WATER NEAR THE BOAT TO DRAW THE SCHOOL IN & THEN BAIL THEM......FOR ARE BAILING GEAR WE USE SMALL STRONG HOOKS ON 3 FT OF 50 TO 80 LB FLURO..LEADER DEPENDING ON THE SIZE OF THE MAHI..WE USE 1/2 OZ WEIGHT WAY UP THE LEADER AS FAR AWAY FROM THE HOOK AS YOU CAN....WHEN YOU TOSS YOUR CHUNKS TOSS THE HOOK BAIT AT THE SAME TIME & IT WILL GET SMACKED....WHEN TOSSING THE CHUNKS DONT GO CRAZY JUST A FEW AT A TIME WILL DO....WE KEEP A DEHOOKER HANDY AT ALL TIMES SO WHEN THE COME IN OUT COMES THE HOOK...ITS VERY EASY TO GET A HOOK IN THE LEG FROM THESE LITTLE BAILERS BOUNCING AROUND THE DECK...ARE BAILING GEAR IS ALWASY RIGGED & READY THERES NOTHING WORSE THEN FINDING THE MAHI & NOT HAVING GEAR READY & SCAMBLING FOR HOOKS & LEADER.....ANOTHER LITTLE TRICK OF MINE IS LEAVING TO TROLLING BAITS IN THE RIGGERS DANGLING SO THE DIP IN & OUT OF THE WATER THIS SEEMS TO KEEP THE MAHIS ATTENTION & SOMETIMES THEY WILL JUMP OUT & SNATCH THE BAIT.......
When the schoolies turn off, I have had very good luck chumming them into a frenzy with glass minnows. Never leave the dock without a couple 5 lb bags. As for leaving the rigger baits dangling, I have had a couple instances of the lure/bait line flipping over the rigger tip and fouling the top roller. Hard to fix on 30' riggers in a rolling boat. I leave the rigger baits out the full distance and bump the trans just enough to keep them there. I have had the big guy pick this up as he gets exicted by the frenzy of the hooked fish. I once had a Blue Marlin pick one up.
Tackle—small conventional reels, like Penn 3/0 or 4/0 reels on 5’ to 5’6” rods. 50 lb main line, ¼ oz egg weight, 6 ft 50 lb fluorocarbon, 5/0-7/0 circle hook (I use Eagle Claw L2004ELF). Spinning rods will do, but your anglers will spin the he!! Out of your line.
Rigging—slide ¼ oz egg weight onto main line and wrap line around weight so that you go thru the egg weight again, same direction, leaving about 18 inches of main line out of the weight. Attach 50 lb fluorocarbon to main line using an Albright knot. **The floro in the line to be doubled over. If you double over the monofilament & use the fluorocarbon to thread thru, the fluorocarbon can easily pull out of the knot**. Attach the circle hook to the fluorocarbon via a palomar knot. Slide the egg weight down to the Albright knot & bring your loop tight.
Bait—cut bait. Anything can work, like 1 inch chunks of ballyhoo (don’t use the head or tail for bait—they are freebies only--I know, I know, you have caught them on heads & tails, but the hook slides thru the meat & hooks the fish more better than it does thru the heads & tails-and they generally don't like the tail anyways, unlike myself ), butterfish chunks (again—no heads or tails), squid, bunker, finger mullet, tuna belly, anything that your catch-of-the-day puked up), but the best bait readily available in the midatlantic is cut red meat—skipjack tuna, bonita, false albacore. Fillet the fish like you intend to eat it. Lay it skin side down and thin the fillet to about 1 inch thick. Use scissors to cut it into 1 inch cubes. Any small bits can be put into a separate pile. I also cut the belly meat but put it into this scrap pile. Use sandwich size ziplock bags (I prefer the zipper lock). Submerge the bags in a bag of seawater while sealing the bag. This will effectively vacuum seal the bag. Freeze the bait in these smaller portions so that you can thaw only what you need for the day, not a big 1 gallon bag of chunks that will be disposed of at the end of the day (when the meat turns reddish brown and then brown it is no longer good for bait. They might eat it, but then again, some days you could catch them on your sh!t if you could keep it on a hook). Place the rest of the scraps, heads & tails in a separate bag, seal & freeze. This is your supply of freebies. (By the way, your unused ballyhoo, having been kept in the bait box all day, on ice, can be diced up into pieces & frozen, ready to use as freebies when bailing dolphin) **Keep the skin on your red meat. Do not skin your redmeat.**
Preparing for Slaughter—if trolling, clear your lines and clear the cockpit. Get all leaders, rigs, baits, bait cooler, spare rods, rigging materials, EVERYTHING NOT ESSENTIAL TO THE MASS SLAUGHTER OF MAHI MAHI out of the way (VERY out of the way). Leave baits in the long riggers—skirted or naked ballyhoo preferably, but anything is better than nothing (a green machine works great too—sorry Marty, one more thing they help to kill). Wind them up so that they are just barely in the water, or half in/half out. Get your bait out, which has been in the bait box on ice, thawed, & place it in a Tupperware container. If you have cockpit chairs, the bait is placed there. Where ever you place it, it should be as close to the cockpit as possible. Place the container on a wet terry towel. This will prevent it from sliding around. Get out that bag of freebies too. You can sit it next to the bait container, but I prefer to have it near me (the mate) while bailing (don’t allow your anglers to use this stuff on the hook, until your bait supply is exhausted). You should have a supply of hooks, ¼ oz weights & fluorocarbon in the cockpit for rerigging. Each angler frees the hook from being snugged up on the rod guide (how you store them) and baits their hook—put the hook thru the skin of the red meat. It is unnecessary (and practically impossible) to hide the hook. Dolphin love to be killed and are not afraid of the boat or the hook (most days). The person acting as mate needs to have their dehooker ready (I keep it it my back pocket, readily accessible, or in a rod holder next to the kill box—a move that your captain will hate). This is a great time to review your bailing procedure with your anglers. There is only 1 way to effectively bail dolphin on your boat—and that is whatever method you have chosen & are now giving instructions on. If your guest “knows” better, take the rod away from them. Let them sulk in the corner by themselves. If you let them do their own thing, it is your skin that the hook will find, or you will be endlessly untangling lines, etc…trust me, I’ve been there. Or ask John Meade about the 17 stitches JUST BARELY ABOVE HIS EYES.
Approaching the school of fish—(for purposes of demonstration, assume it is a lobster ball. It could be anything—board, cargo net, tree, log, pallet, sunken boat, bucket, grass bed, Jimmy Hoffa…you get the picture). Motor up to the lobster ball UPCURRENT, on the windward side. As you are passing the ball, drop some freebies overboard, right next to the boat—DO NOT THROW THEM 20 FT AWAY FROM THE BOAT. However, it is ok to throw them ahead of the boat, but in line with being right next to the boat. You want the fish near you. Pass the ball about 20-25 yds, turn slightly windward and take her out of gear. You are now going to pass, side-to-wind, closely to the ball. The freebies are floating down, getting the attention of any dolphin present & wishing that they were dead. The anglers are positioned on the upcurrent side of the boat, rod in hand, reel in freespool, thumb on spool, line cranked up so that the ¼ oz weight is at the rod tip.
Fishing—you are attempting to maintain some level of order, not total mayhem. However, this will be difficult. The anglers drop their baits in the waterstand on the upcurrent side of the boat and begin paying out line. Pull line from the spool with your free hand, keeping light pressure on the spool. DO NOT STOP PAYING OUT LINE UNTIL YOU GET A BITE. This is the single most difficult part of the exercise. When the dolphin approaches your bait & you stop paying out line, they will often turn-off & not eat the bait. When you get a bite, release the spool, engage the drag and reel. Notice that the big game jerk was missing. DO NOT LIFT THE ROD TIP. Both j & circle hooks will set using this method. When you hookup, announce it “I’m hooked up” and start working your way to the back & opposite side of the boat, where the mate is waiting to dehook your fish. This requires the over-under fish dance. The other anglers keep paying out line while they do the dance with you. IF other fish are following your fish to the boat (and they often will), now the other anglers need to reel in their lines and pay them out again. It is counter productive to retrieve your line to the point that the weight is at the rod tip again. Get your bait about 10 ft from the boat & feed from there. That’s where the fish will be. Meanwhile, this is a good time for the mate to drop 2-4 freebies overboard, next to the boat. DO NOT THROW THE FREEBIES. You want the fish near the boat, so drop the freebies near the boat.
Keeping 'em interested—Everyone knows to keep a hooked fish in the water to keep catching the school. But there is a correct way to do this. Crank the fish up to about 15 ft from the boat & keep the rod tip down. This will allow the fish plenty of movement room, w/o tiring them by dragging them to the boat & overly restricting their movement. They need to swim around to breathe. Also, this will allow them to swim a little deeper, keeping them from jumping & spitting the hook. Further, his buddies will be more likely to stay near him if he is slightly farther away from the boat. Dropping a few freebies occasionally will get the school feeding. It is the steady (but light) supply of food that get the fish going wild.
Slaughter mode—The second fish is hooked up, so the first fish is reeled to the boat, keeping the rod tip down. Keeping the rod tip up pulls up on the fish & encourages them to jump, a very bad thing. They can spit the hook or break off. Lose more than 2-3 fish & its time to find another school. Sometimes, they stop feeding after 1 lost fish. The fish is boat side, the mate grabs the leader, takes 1-2 wraps and smoothly lifts the fish up & into the boat. Do not snatch, jerk or sling the fish. You will lose fish. The second angler does the over-under fish dance, making their way to the corner where the mate is waiting for them. Same drill, get the fish about 15 ft away and leave them there until the next fish is hooked. Meanwhile, angler #1 is checking their bait, rebaiting if necessary, and moving to the opposite “corner” of the cockpit. In other words, the mate is in the starboard corner, near the transom. Angler #1 moves forward so that they are closest to the bow and on the port side of the boat. Drop your line in the water & begin paying out line. Do not drop in a line in front of the anglers. This will drop your line over top of the other lines, creating a mess. This is the second most difficult thing to keep in order. In the frenzy, your anglers will find an open slot on the gunwale & start fishing. Now when someone hooks up, you start out with crossed lines. Dolphin have a keen sense for detecting this scenario. They will immediately swim under that line & begin jumping on the other side of it. They are not trying to free themselves. They are looking for the 3rd line to entangle. When they find it, they will swim towards it & begin jumping over it & then swim under it. Now they have made a pretzel. & their buddies have a chance to lose interest while you unpretzel your lines, and no one is dumping freebies to keep them interested. Provided that your anglers are “circling” the cockpit properly, you are now entering the slaughter zone. If you keep the 1 fish hooked, 15 ft from the boat, and continue paying out lines & hooking up, w/o losing fish, they will continue to feed until there are none left or they are full from feeding too many freebies.
The mate—this is a critical position. Once you have wrapped the leader to within about 10-14 inches of the fish and smoothly lift them into the boat, you need to dehook them. I prefer the T-bar dehookers, with the simple bend at the end. Hold the fish over the killbox (or cooler or trash can or whatever) and slide the dehooker down the line to the fishes mouth. Lowering the wrapped leader so that it is below the fish, pull up on the dehooker. The hook will be in the corner of the fish’s mouth 80% of the time. Keep pulling up on the dehooker until it is in the bite of the hook. Now give it a good jerking motion up while keeping the wrapped leader below the fish. The will dislodge the hook from the fish’s mouth. If the fish has been hooked deeper, then the bite of the dehooker will be on the leader when you lift the dehooker & lower the wrapped leader. Give it a couple of abrupt jerks & the hook will begin to work its way free. Occasionally you will break off the hook. The angler (or captain on the fly bridge) ties on a new one. The mate controls the flow of the cockpit. Keep an eye on your anglers, giving guidance as needed. When they are reeling in their fish, as it approaches the boat, they need to keep the rod tip down. When the fish is close enough to be left in the water, tell them to stop winding, “leave the fish right there”, “do not bring the fish any closer until I tell you I am ready for him”, “Don’t drop in there, you will make mess of the lines. Pay out you line from the corner over there”, etc….Your job is to keep a supply of hook baits in the Tupperware container, keep a few freebies going out (like when every rod is hooked up & there is no supply of food in the water), and dehook the fish. Put on your Grudens for this. Getting dolphin blood & slime all over you is messy & can give you a staph infection if you have any open cuts, wounds. (Any day you bail dolphin, be sure to wash your hands, arms, legs, feet in bleach water).
Miscellaneous--when you find the bigger fish & can easily identify the bull in the group, get him hooked up. Now, keep him in the water 15-20 ft away from the boat, and DO NOT PUT HIM IN THE BOAT. The cows will continue to eat as long as the bull is there. When you gaff him into the boat, they will get fickle & soon stop eating. This generally does not affect the smaller fish. Also, if you have broken off, pulled the hook, dragged the bait away from, or jerked the bait out of the mouth of 2-3 fish, you are about done with the school. Sometimes it takes only 1, sometimes you can break off 10 & they keep eating. But most of the time, it takes 2-3 fish & they stop cooperating. Next, when you are drifting and begin to lose the school, stop feeding them. Motor back up to the ball/board/net, etc....and start over. If you drag the school far from the object & then lose them, sometimes they "lose" the object too. or whatever, you setup again, and they are not there. When you gaff (or hoist) the dolphin into the boat, do not let their tail touch the deck. That's when they will freak on you, if they are not already. A calm dolphin, hanging from the gaff, should be placed over the kill box & quickly dropped into it with someone closing the lid for you. Close the lid on the gaff handle, it won't hurt it. Then remove the gaff. This will prevent the gaff from finding someone's leg or the fish tail whipping the crap out of ya.
I think I covered most of it. Hope this helps your bailing time. Like anything else in fishing, proper preparation will ensure a successful effort.
And if you see that blue marlin patrolling the lobster ball, get a small dolphin on a 12/0 hook, 200-400 lb leader (which you have rigged ahead of time, in case it happens) in the water. When he eats, let him eat for a little longer than you would a ballyhoo—it’s a bigger bait. When you engage the drag, engage the gears too—use the boat to get some speed & help to set the hook.
Author, writer, marine artist, charter captain, lure manufacturer, ind. consultant
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Couple of guys there who not only know how to do it, they know how to describe it, in detail, in order, the whole shootin' match. As a lowly scribe I can really appreciate the advice given here, along with the entertaining, professional manner used by both posters.
Funny thing about bailers...I have never had a bunch of bail fish down in Mexico - not once in thousands of trips. We can and do catch some little taters - we call them "doritos" instead of "dorados" - but they are few and far between number one and number two, we never find big schools of the small fry on the floaters that we fish. They are for the most part a small subspecies that we call "Dorado Golfito", or Gulf Dorados. They don't seem t get over five pounds or so and are more streamlined than the commons.
We do not get weedlines; our floaters are kelp patties, floating trees, dead birds, maybe a hatch cover or other odd piece of wood and even whale skins (guess who is illegally killing and skinning the whales?).
Cabo's surface waters are remarkably empty of floaters, so when we find one, there is often an absolute HORDE of dorado under and surrounding it out to as much as a quarter mile or more away! Historically, these have all been nice fish too, running from about fifteen to sixty or seventy pounds.
I have seen one floater, say a whale skin, get spotted by one boat with the fleet zeroing in on them that first day and probably averaging at least fifteen fish apiece - and that's very conservative. Then, damned near the entire fleet would follow that floater for a week or more, coming in and taking unbelievable numbers of nice fish day after day. (The limit is five per boat per day, but only a few of us lived by those limits. Most of the fleet caught and kept as many as they could.)
Like I said, the numbers were staggering. Just taking seven, 100 boat days with each catching fifteen fish and that adds up to 10,500 dorado off of one floater! I know that it sounds unbelievable, but anyone who was down there and experienced one of these bites can tell you what it was like.
Sadly and almost unbelievably, that dorado fishery has gone to hell in a handbasket. The arrival of the longliners did the trick in a very short number of years. Now, before anyone jumps in and starts ranting about the shortliners taking so many, take note that the very same sort of fishing and results had been going on down there since the first gringos showed up with no apparent negative effect on the dorados. In fact, they often became a real problem when you had people who wanted marlin. Bait and switch fishing saved many a day for us when others were getting covered with and had to deal with big dorados. Because we only hooked one if our people wanted one to eat, we caught no dorados, but did get usually get them their billfish.
It wasn't until the longliners came and did in a big piece of our large swordfish population, then switched to dorado sets that the slide began and was noticeable. Then, the Mexican government licensed something on the order of three thousand panga (skiff) fishermen to use mile and a half long longlines that the ax really fell on the dorados. The locals use live bait on the lines and target the striped marlin and dorados. And if you know your dorados, you know how much they love floaters. A surface longline has plenty of them, each with a special rigging they have come up with that has lots of hooks in a small area to take care of the schools that come to the floats.
I get the top fleets in Cabo's catch reports every day. It is utterly astounding and terribly disheartening to watch those dorado numbers as they dropped like a stone over the past few years.
I wanted to include a tip here for those on bailers or mixed bailers and gaffers that have been picked over and have gotten super picky. When I was back there (and we found a similar bait down south) we always carried a good supply of killies, mummichogs, mud minnows or whatever they are called in your area for when a dorado or (remember this one) tuna floater bite shut down on us. Fire a partial or whole handful of killies out there, rig some of those colorful male fish on hooks and toss them out there with the freebies and watch what happens! Just toss a couple or a few at a time after that and I think you'll really enjoy the results.
Standard equipment for bait fishing floaters down in Cabo is a regular, seven foot striped marlin shooter (bait pitching or casting) rod and reel, thirty pound line, a 7 or 8/0 live bait hook (we used circles) on a ten or twelve foot, 100-150# wind on leader or conventionally attached leader. The rods for the conventional leaders have special, very large guides and tip top. The leader is because marlin pop up in the dorados many times. Bait is usually live mackerel or caballitos (goggle eyes). Once they got wise to the big live stuff, a killie on a small tuna bait hook tied direct to the running line always got them stoked up again for us. Give it a try. Killies are easy to trap or buy and keep alive and frisky.
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), butterfish chunks (again—no heads or tails), squid, bunker, finger mullet, tuna belly, anything that your catch-of-the-day puked up), but the best bait readily available in the midatlantic is cut red meat—skipjack tuna, bonita, false albacore. Fillet the fish like you intend to eat it. Lay it skin side down and thin the fillet to about 1 inch thick. Use scissors to cut it into 1 inch cubes. Any small bits can be put into a separate pile. I also cut the belly meat but put it into this scrap pile. Use sandwich size ziplock bags (I prefer the zipper lock). Submerge the bags in a bag of seawater while sealing the bag. This will effectively vacuum seal the bag. Freeze the bait in these smaller portions so that you can thaw only what you need for the day, not a big 1 gallon bag of chunks that will be disposed of at the end of the day (when the meat turns reddish brown and then brown it is no longer good for bait. They might eat it, but then again, some days you could catch them on your sh!t if you could keep it on a hook). Place the rest of the scraps, heads & tails in a separate bag, seal & freeze. This is your supply of freebies. (By the way, your unused ballyhoo, having been kept in the bait box all day, on ice, can be diced up into pieces & frozen, ready to use as freebies when bailing dolphin) **Keep the skin on your red meat. Do not skin your redmeat.**