I printed this in another forum and had a lot of response. I catch a lot of marlin, mostly blues off Palm Beach. This is my quick how to...
Me, I own a lure company and do charters about 250 days a year for the last 28+ years. I quit drinking five years back and when I got sober it dawned on me that I wasn't getting the same charge out of everyday fish like I used to. The blue marlin however gives me that jolt that I need to be really satisfied. So although I have been focusing on them over my career, I have really turned up the heat on them over the last five. Palm Beach has a bunch of them to offer if you go and try for them. Are you going to bail them every trip out? I wouldn't go that far but I will say that you can expect a lot if you GO MARLIN FISHING!
I'm going to outline in installments what has been working well for me over the years maybe you can use some of the info to improve your odds of catching one. I will preface with this is not an advertisement for my lures or charters. There are several great products that can be substituted for what I describe in the following.
WHERE: A very common question. I will break it into seasonal preferences. Again these locations are where I have done well. Perhaps there are better spots but this is where I have done best.
January- March: I have noticed that there is a fair amount, often the best run of the year out in roughly 1000-1300 feet. Out front of Palm Beach and Jupiter inlets has been the better areas but one area roughly just below the breakers at the 38 line seems to be my year long spot. As this time frame wears on I see a slow trend for the fish to get a bit smaller and move into 500-600 feet, off the Dodge wall. The fish in the deep earlier on seem to be more agressive with wide zig zag moves brefore eating. As there seems to be two distinct size classes being like 100 or less or 300 and over, I'm assuming this may be some mating run.
March- June: I see that body of fish around march start to move back out toward deeper water and by April I find most of them in roughly 800 a bit north of the aforementioned 38 line... Also a second body of predominatly larger she fish moves in to the shallows on the fringes of the bonito herds that gather off say Juno to Jupiter. I have never been able to get any of this body to eat trolled offerings and have only produced using the live bonitos. I will outline the how to in another post.Typically April into the first week of May I am Bahama side so , I apologize on not being able to impart much info there.
June- August: This is when I start to hammer that area from 40- 32 with 36-38 being my favorite. Depth is usually 960-1020 feet where I like it but some days it can be in 720 or out in 1200. I find that if I go past that area I usually see few billfish and start finding more mahi. The bite seems to shif to earlier and earlier in the day and this may be a result of water temperatures reaching the high end of their prefered zone. Now, the month of August, I am typically up north fishing the marlin tournaments in Ocean City, Cape MAy, Montauk and NorthCarolina. My friend that fishes the way I do ,continues to do well through the month, again noting that the bite continues to get earlier yet.
September- December: This time of year things really slow down as to the blue marlin but I have seen a few and picked off even fewer, near those schools of small blackfins that often pass through that time of year.
What to Drag:
This spread is the one I do most of the damage with. I set this one up to use off a medium smallish twin inboard rig. She produces well off my Albemarle and the Bertram 28 I play on... You will note that the designs are "noisy". I do this based on the fish's nervous system. Lets say a 400lb blue has an eye a bit smaller than a tennis ball but she hasa bundle of nerves running down the latteral line that pick up vibration (sound) from much farther off. Also the nerves in the bill are pressure sensitive and when they get up in the wake of these baits it draws more interest. They can feel the bait much the same way as you can feel it if your're driving and get up tight behind a semi truck.
The left rigger bait (blue silver dk) mimics a flyer. Although marlin need more calories than they provide they need to eat flyers I'm assuming for nutrient value that other forage doesn't provide (unless they just tate like candy) ...
The right rigger gets the same design with the concave making noise but this time in hot pink. This bait works better in the morning and perhaps even though color blind the hue may just entice that "kill" bite. It should also be pointed out that this color is an "odd duck" in an otherwise fairly natural color pattern. I run my riggers roughly 125-150' back and these get medium large hoos tacked to them..
The flat lines get run at 90-100' . I run a flat head over hoo on left and a bird with a swimming hoo on right.
Inside riggers are run with two larger concave lures one blue (again mimicing a flyer) and one purple to mimic juvenile tunas we often see out there. These one's get big hoos and are run at about 75 feet.
Those inside rigger baits are run about twenty feet back from the big lures. The big stuff gets run up close to the boat because its your biggest teaser. They run off tag lines attached to the same eye as your inside rigger baits run out of. I run a slant on left and concave on right. This again is to create just as much nosie as possible. If calm I run two slants in this slot. When choppy they only seem to do well down or side sea. Up sea the concave runs true and will draw bites both ways. So in the slop I mix the two.
The center bait really is an option and often I switch out all kinds of goodies back there to see what is working. Often it will get a weighted red black bullet and run in case theres a wahoo around...
The next spread I'm showing is one I run on large boats when strictly hunting for blues...
The tear drop concaves get run on the riggers. As the big boats create more turbulence I like to run bigger baits so they can get spotted easier in the increased wash. I run the bird bait down the center long as a "last ditch" chance for them to eat as they may get a bit shy after batting around the big plastic I'm running in the spread.
The inside riggers in the stpread get run longer than the flats at about 90' These get run off tag lines to keep them high in conjuction with the big boats taller riggers. Slants being noisiest often draw the wildest crashes.
On the flats I run a jet and concave. Again these baits run true in the slop and in the colors I've shown usually get just plain eaten and the fish goes away
This spread is for the outboards. Unfortunately for them they lack the harmonics of a twin inboard and the higher pitch they emit can even drive blues away. A second drawback is their out riggers are often not sturdy enough to support tag lines and the bigger baits mentioned above... With this in mind they really need to drag smaller baits and drag them farther back. I again am generalizing and there are some outboards that can and do raise a lot of blues.
Here we have gone to the same flat line baits as the medium boat spread. Baits where inside riggers would normally go get plain flat headed lures which when dragged right slither and elicit a fdeeding bite... The rigger baits are the same as the medium boat spread also, just run farther back. Down the center of the spread you will see a small slant design. This one is a Bart mini 1656... One of my favorites for really kicking up a commotion for a small bait...
As I ran out of space above, now I should point out that these spreads should be dragged at 6.2-7.4 knots. You might ask how a hoo can stay together at that high speed? Very good question. ... I do my best to get fresh. I pop their back bones and pack them in straight salt and refrigerate for 24 hours. I pour off the liquid, re salt and then pop in the freezer or use that day..
Bowing them Up:
Now you've arrived at the general area and its time to fine tune things. There is no X on the water so you're going to need to make one. Look for rips, birds, weeds etc like you do for dolphing but this time keep a bit more distance than usual. Longer straighter lines seem to produce more and if your carving a fine edge on structure your baits wont drag as true or make as much noise that they can home in on from longer distances.
When the big girl shows up it isn't always a big explosion. Often they will come in and shadow a spread. Its not uncommon to see one twenty feet back and six feet down from a bait. Eyes are everything! Don't just look at the bait, look for shadows, something moving or just something that seems suddenly different. Now if its a white that comes up They can go chameleon and absolutely match the water color so even swirls can mean something... More often than not a blue may come up and bat a bait and disappear. THIS DOES NOT MEAN IT WENT AWAY.!
Pick up the stick and start jigging with the most pronounced strokes you can. Keep your thumb on the spool and keep at it. It could take five minutes or more but keep jigging. Suddenly she'll come back up and pile on it.
Thumb comes up tip goes down. a quick three count the thumb starts to tighten up as the lever comes forward. Now comes sinking the steel. This ain't espn on saturday morning, so no power stroking... None of that rearing back and over your head stuff! Short sharp strokes- lots of em- and just keep reeling even if your not gaining. This digs the hook through. A big stroke only serves to bend the rod, stretch the string and telegraph to the fish that it just made a mistake. The short stroke has that hook burying itself from the get go.
If she doesn't raise on that bait again. try dropping the bird in along side that bait. often the natural bait will draw the bite where the other won't.
Ok now you bowed up. At first the line just kind of slips of the reel against its shear weight, then the beast realizes shes in trouble and the afterburners go on. Meanwhile when you get done yelling "holy s*** look at tha f****r go!" You will have a lot to do. As its not likely that all of you will be pulling 80 w gear, line capacity is gonna be an issue quickly. You need to get that other gear OUT OF THE WATER and AWAY asap. Me, I reel em to the tip and toss em in a pile in the cabin you can take care of the mess later, but right now you want only clear working room. You don't want dangling hooks or lures anywhere near the action because if something bad can happen it will. The other part of clearing is to get the stuff on the side that the fish is running to out first. This way you can start backing before all the stuff is cleared and minimize that line hemorrage.
The shorter the distance between the fish and you the more likely that the fight will have a happy ending. If your're in an outboard , don't back down. Instead, work the fish to the front of the boat and chase from tehre. Whether backing or chasing it is hyper important to keep the line tight.Do neither faster than the angler can retrieve the line.
Ok now we are done with the first few seconds. If you look down and see your spool is more than half way down this next maneuver will go against your grain but needs to be done... Back off the drag. Why? Because no the diameter of the spool has decreased so much that the number of revolutions per yard of line will increase but your drag was set for a full spool and its revolutions. I'm not saying toss it in free spool but pull her back some.
Some where along this initial run , the fish will probably give you some spectacular jumps. As awesome as it is, this is no time for losing concentration. Keep reeling, chasing and clearing. How far up do you run or back down before slowing? I will get as close to the fish as possible because what they like to do next is best minimized as much as possible. When she gets the hint that jumping and going away isnt working she's going to switch to her plan B which is the dreaded sounding. The closer you are when she starts, and the more you make her earn those sounding yards, the less work its gonna be for you to get them all back.
Now she heads for the basement. Butts pucker and its a waiting game. She's gonna do it, you cant stop her but you can make it tough on her. Put some bend in the rod, let the glass whoop her slow and sure. Eventually she'll stop and hopefully not too far down.
Now put the short stroke to work. Just six inches at a time. Work her back up with short strokes. If she'll let you, take all you can before she gets tired of the deep thing and runs again. Hopefully this run brings her back up top. Otherwise you're going to have to do it all over again.
Often times you may get in a stale mate where neither of you gains any line. If this happens you can eithe stick it out or corkscrew her. That involves pulling the boat away and figure out what her circling pattern is. Then you get in front of hre and circle with her. Stopping once ina a while to take what you can. once she comes back up near the top the game will change again. ..
Ok! She finally is back up top. Just a piece of cake now? Nah... This is where she can get squirrelly. Take a moment to check her color. If its a chocolaty purple you're in good shape. If shes blue and showing stripes this is not quite as good. If she's showing a green ish tint take your time and don't push to get her to the boat. That green phase means she's still loaded with energy and could go off with a passion either with a hot run or a dangersous jump boat side or that she just has the capability of busting you and the boat up when she gets boat side.
A color I didn't mention but needs to be adressed is a sudden change to almost black. She's ticked and may well charge the boat. If she goes black put it in gear the other way and let her cool down.
Wait for that purply chocolate phase before getting all the way back to the leader. Heres where you really need to be careful. Grab the leader gently with gloved hands. More guys get mamed or killed being macho and "wrapping" the leader and trying to muscle the fish. She swims for a living and outweighs most guys by double. If you get in a whizzing contest as to whos strongest you may get a bad lesson in whoopass. Since just straight pulling puts you at a disadvantage take just a half wrap around your hand. Get low, lock your knees under the gunwale and be ready in an instant to let go.
Draw her gently along side. By being gentle you can keep her calm. Grab the bill only if shes pretty well done. If I bill one I pretty much hold it like a base ball bat but at least with me my power arm is down at the mouth end. If she starts to get squirrely, two quick tricks can calm her down. ONe is to gently cover her eye with your gloved hand. (The dark soothes her and she cant find a target). I have also found that grabbing their pectoral fin, pulling it slow but hard and kind of rolling her on her back has amazing tranquilizing powers.
Now get your hook back or cut the line as close as you can, put the boat back in gear, turn her back up right and when she either changes back to a healty uniform color or statrs to swim with you let her go.
Replies to I/M's and questions from other forum...
Like do I use that spread for Bahamas? I use a spread similar to the first except that I slide the larger concaves from the inside riggers back to the outside rigger. The smaller concaves and center don't go out. Over there its six baits max and its not wise to test their patience...
Another good one was about color selection... I prefer the blues and purples with a bright pink one for that odd duck anger bite when I fish out here. In the Bahamas, since the lines are limited I leave the pink out of the mix except when on the full moon and the fish are being picky and the bites are more kill than feed types. Up in the north east I will frequently use more green shades to match up to the macks and squid of the canyons... Remember its not color as much as hue (shades of grey).
Yet another was about teasers. I use teasers more for whites than blues. But a dozen 9-14" squids or a Boone lulu bowling pin type work well. Down here though wahoo have a tendency to smack them so the more solid pin type might be a better choice. If running them, you should have someone dedicated to keeping an eye just on the inside stuff. Often blues will get angry at a wildly moving pin and unload quickly on something close by or the pin itself. I should also mention that if I'm running a bunch of big plastic or teasers a pitch bait rod with a small mack or big hoo is a very handy tool to have stand by.
Yet another couple came in asking about the islanders, macks and soft heads. Islanders are great baits especially Blue and white. I've taken a lot of money using them. On long runsor rough water you may want to run them instead of the concave left rigger bait. Macks are wonderful baits but down here they seem to get washed before they get eaten which can be expensive. The other problem with them is Wahoo, cuda and dolphin will frequently get to them before the blue finds it. Soft versus hard? I found a blue that wants to eat typically has no problem comming back over and over and piling on hard just as well as soft. I use hard even after investing a ton into making soft because i nosticed that the softs had a tendency to run different than hard. This was due after some research to water pressure squashing them down and ever so slightly changing the hydrodynamics when the shape changed. Soft head brand was designed as soft and there fore don't have that problem.
Single vs double hooks. I'm adamant about a single. First you arent trying to sink two big chunks of steel into tat hard mouth. Second is that lures run truer with a single. Third is a saftey realted point. You don't want a second hook flopping around when your are dealing with them boatside or if a dolphin/ wahoo eats it and you've got one flopping around in the pit.
Stainless vs Ni Cad... I'm all for regular... If you have to cut the leader at release time they will rust ouut quicker. Then I believe I can get and keep them sharper than stainless. Lastly, stainless has a tendency to "spring" . It has far less resistance to pressure and opens easier than standard hooks. The problem is often un noticed as the hook springs back to original shape after letting go...
What about green and yellow? Yse the dolphin colored baits do well when the dolphin are thick. That color scheme seems to do fairly well in the keys where the schoolies are around in big numbers. Up here, at least for the most part we don't see many schoolies in the area I described above. A few bigger fish of 10-20lbs with the occasional slob of 40 or so is l what we see and since I see more flyers and tunaoid bait in the area I try to match the hatch there. Again what I'm posting here is not the end all answers. Rather, it's what I have seen and feel. In no way should that stop you from pulling a bait in that color you feel good about. You'll see a big green mackerelis looking bait, right inside tag line bait in my big boat spread. That particular lure has over thirty fish under her belt (though mostly from up north) and on a big boat with tall riggers she produces better than others I make identical to her. Call it a luck thing I like to have her out...
Wahooking: You posed a good question about placement in the wakes. Where I like the slanted lures to run is on the face of a wake. I'm not going to get into a wake count as some guys do, because each boat will have different wake lengths and at different speeds. This gives them a nice surface to really get the water kicking high over them. If you get your speed and position of the bait right it should pop once in a four or five count and the face spray should rise well up and land about at the back of the skirt.
The concaves I often run at the back of the wake or at the bottom. You don't want them high and just skipping. I like a longer pop count on them with up one and down five or six being right. They should be throwing smoke (bubble trail) until just before they pop again. The flats should run boring as skimmed milk only catching air once ina a while. Keeping the bird bait down is tough at marlin speed and I'll be the first to admit I can'talways keep it swimming... Maybe some one could chime in if they have a fix idea?
Another great question. If you go back and look at this time of years body of fish in the where to secttion, you will see that it breaks into two distinct groups. One being inshore working the bonitos you ask about... I will go into detail about this fishery in Marlin 102 but for now I can outline it a bit...
When the TBL had that successful event in 1989 or 1990 with 31 fish for 32 boats. Almost oall of them were caught on the live bonito. Rather than sink them I have a preference to not only swim as free as possible with no weight and the least obtrusive bridle possible, but I like to get to the offshore side of the school and out a bit past the edge as quickly as possible.
The area we have up here that holds the bonito well also holds tons of sharks and cudas. Their in such numbers that I average maybe one blue bite in 12 or more bait presentations. Most of the rest being chopped up or leaving you with an hour long fight with some sloppy big old bull shark whos teeth didn't happen to find your mono leader. I don't totally object to catching these others and have had a couple stand out fish among them including a 71lb cuda and a 374 lb thresher shark! Still I find that if I get out side of the school and edge they stand some what of a fighting chance. If you drop them I would expect jaws to come calling usually within a minute or two.
It would be like dropping a live bonito right at the whistle buoy down your way...
I see you mention wire line. I know you are all about wire being in the wahoo game. Wire however has an audible hum to it whether from a rod or down rigger. I am of the opinion that that being a rather high pitch it might drive your marlin the other way. I also see weights mentioned and even on mono this could present a problem when the fish goes airborne and starts shaking its head. I can only envision a weight getting slung around and how fast it could tear the hook hole open enough to release your fish shortly after hook up. Admittedly big lures do weigh a bit and potentially pose that same problem. Again I will address in 102...
Lazy... Another good question.
I fish the canyons from late July to late August each year... I've done ok with these spreads up there but there are a lot of things I change. Because we're dealing with more whites and tuna up there we need to broaden the scope of the spread to accomodate them.
Up there my center bait becomes a green machine with an eel. My riggers get swimming ballyhoos. My flats still include a bird/ swimmig hoo and a small flat lure over a hoo on the left but it will either be in mackerel green pattern or a rainbow instead of the blue purple or sometimes rainbow I run here. The big green mackerel lure shown in my big boat spread graces the right inside rigger but a smaller purple slant one on the left. Again the big stuff is on tag lines. Depending on the forage size and seas I will run one or the other size of my small concaves behind the big baits. Often I lean toward the green mackerel pattern on one and the other will be purple, pink or rainbow. Especially by the time i get to the hudson blue pretty well leaves my spread. I say pretty well because I had a pig hammer a big blue concave run on a flat two years ago there.
In the Hudson becareful what you ask for because you may find it. There are some monsterous blues in there.
Knowing that, its not past me to drop a skipjack, a small yellowfin or even a full grown dolphin in the wash up close.
At Ocean City I use the spread I describe above. At Cape May the crew I fish with there are focused on blue only. When doing that We run medium lures off tags on the long riggers. The same slants on the inside riggers, a big slant and a big jet on the flats and a straight runner bullet head gets the shotgun way back slot. (Big eyes really like that one)...
I only half answered your question about canyons... I'm very fond of daisy chains of squid. A dozen on each is what I drag. Whites love em and tuna pile all over them . I can't say that I have seen blues load up on them but I don't think they can hurt...
Another thats great up there is dredges with hollographic strips of fish. Down here they work well on sails but can be costly with our cudas and wahoos working them over...
Mid stream spooling? I'd have to agree that it was blues or bluefins...Split-tail, Charlie Hayden has always maintained there is a center stream body of giants at certain times of year and have no reason to doubt it. Why not ? They run past Bimini with some on the banks and some in the deep. You hear of dumpings off Walkers and even in the Pocket of Chub... This time of year is that big run but its possible they are there at other times too.
Indeed things change at high speed. My problem with the weights was those jumpers slinging that lead around and tearing the hook hole larger. I've heard of marlin eating as high as 24 knots over in hawaii. I never had a lure I could get to run past about 19. Down in Islamorada in the begining of my lure endeavours I used to do well, going back and forth between the edge and the hump area at like 14 -16 kts which was typical of our speeds back then.
Could be an excellent choice of what to do off here while making the 10 miles between the edge and the grounds I like about 12 off... Thanks!
Just remember that even the heaviest of tackle isn't gonna slow your big bugger blues. They have all the cards. With that high speed or all lure approach you may want to turn toward the fish and work up the side so you don't get line hemmoraged to death. Get in front of her then let her swim to you. Thats what we do with the monster lure fish we get and could be a way to counter that weight problem... On another point: A little wire won't hurt. Some purists might disagree but I catch quits a few on wire leader. When i was talking before I was talking about wire line and downrigger cables doing the humming...
Miss Rach-
Very good observation. The spreads we use in St. T are definately faster spreads. The spread there is also predominantly plastic with a pitch bait. The seas there are rougher and the lures we use are typically a slightly longer more tapered head than we use here. It's what I call a long pull design. They need 7.5-9.0 knots to really work well. Here the fish seem to raise and actually eat the offering more in a feeding kind of way. This is why the meat mix. Down there the fish is more of a "kill" bite. Much angrier it seems. Often the fish raise coal black there and you can tell they are just trying to kill. It could be that we don't get as many "eaters" ther because of the obscene amounts of forage they have available along that drop. The large body of bait theory might explain why I can't seem to troll up the ones hanging near the bonito schools here using the spreads I described. Perhaps one day I'll put some long pull designs and jack up the throttles though and see if I can't draw a bite that way... It will have to be all plastic because the bait just can't take that higher speed...
Deep C,
You should send that in to a magazine. That was a great breakdown on marlin fishing. If I make it back to Jupiter this winter I'm gonna definetly look you up. This past Feb all I did was bottom fish and hang down by the inlet at Castaways(I know tourist trap) but great view! Which marina is your boat at?
Definetly, stop by we're right down the street from the big show. If I can do anything to help you out for the tourny, let me know, and I have a t-shirt waitin for ya it's always good to advertise in Fla.
Chuck,
I'll be there and probably take you up on a t... My real lucky ones are about ready for the graveyard and I have to go through dozens to find those special ones...
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