Another vote for the GM bars, I run 2 short corners rigged splash bar with little birds up front like the mauler bar pictured, than 2 more tip rigger without the birds, bar out of the water of course. As far as shell squids go, hot pink has to be the best for me so far, pic when I get home.
The bar that puts fish in the boat. There is never the best spreader bar, but rather the best bar for a given situation. My advice by them all, this way you have them all for every situation.
Up here in the land of "sand dunes and salty air, with quaint little villages here and there" we have two distinct fisheries that call for two distinct appoaches.
South of MV and Nantucket I like these (green/yellow in this case) hatch bait bars....from Offshore Innovations
East of Chatham the bigger squid (in black in this particular case) work well.....
Author, writer, marine artist, charter captain, lure manufacturer, ind. consultant
Big, little and in between...the bait's change
To save me some writing time, the contents of this post have mostly been compiled from the book New Secrets of Modern Trolling and Wahoo Trollers Bible. My goal isn’t to get into an argument, but rather to enter into the discussion with a perspective of having fished with spreaderbars at least as much as anyone else here and in fact moreso than many because I have been developing and fishing with them for twenty years now. No brag there, just facts. As a result of all of those years “hanging around bars”, I even came up with what I feel is an exceptional bar design, but this isn’t about that; it is about an issue that rarely seems to come up during these discussions, regardless of the brand of bars being used. Again, my goal isn’t to argue or put anyone down – it is meant to help others when it comes to getting the most out of spreaderbars.
First and foremost, as far as I am concerned, bars are just another lure family, the best catching one of them all for tunas. Most experienced tuna fishermen know them to be very good tuna lures. There are also many who have yet to discover just how effective they are and there are those who don't get the most out of them. My main point is (and here I agree with LazyFatas247) just as it is with virtually all other lures, at different times different sizes are more effective than others when it comes to catching bar tunas and other species. Trying to pin down one size that is "best" is no different than trying to pick one size marlin or other lure that is always the best. Trolling one size bar is just like trolling one size lure of any other kind all of the time – sometimes it will be close to the size of what the tunas are feeding on and it will catch great. But if they are feeding on a different size bait, bigger or smaller, that same lure can and in fact usually does perform poorly.
Other type lure fishermen universally adjust to this without thinking about it much by carrying and using different size lures, often several sizes in one trolling spread. This latter one of the biggest reasons – the biggest as far as I’m concerned - why some experience fewer multiple hookups than others, the latter usually being sharpies who let the fish "tell them" what they are feeding on on a given day and then setting up full spreads of (especially) that size lures, or in this case, bars. These pros wash out or cut the stomachs of first fish to determine what prey and what size it is that they are feeding on that day and then load up their patterns with bars and/or lures that are the same size (first, as far as I'm concerned) and color (not as important to me but maybe to you and that's fine) as what the fish are feeding on. Now when a school of tuna raises to the spread there are bunches of the right sized baits for them to hit and none of the wrong size for them to reject. Coupled with the simple act of continuing to run the boat until the lines are loaded up, the usual result is a very high percentage of multiple hookups, almost regardless of the tuna or other schooling species of fish.
Because of their size, giant bluefin are different, but sometimes the same as far as getting locked on a given prey – not always, but sometimes. Like the big marlins, they can be pretty opportunistic feeders too. A big difference between them and the other, smaller tunas is simply that size thing...what might be a huge lure to an eighty pound yellowfin (or bluefin, for that matter) is a mere snack to an eight hundred pound giant. It is because of this that I have always written of the giants separately from the other tunas and the smaller bluefin. It is the same in the marlin family, with the blues and blacks once they become adults being considerably different animals than the smaller whites and striped marlin, which the big girls are similar to when younger and smaller. Lumping the marlins or the tunas all together can lead to some very incorrect assumptions and ineffective patterns.
To me, a top spreaderbar user is no different than a top lure fisherman – he has an arsenal of different sizes (and colors for those concerned with that) available of the most likely bait sizes for the kind and size tuna present, goes further than that and trolls a mixed size spread at first that offers numbers of different sizes, checks the stomachs of the first fish or couple that he catches and then bases his spread – a monochromatic one - all the same color and size bar spread – on what the fish are feeding on...not on what he’s heard they are feeding on, not on what they were feeding on last year, or last time out (although that’s a good place to start as part of the early, mixed size spread), not on what the guy in the tackle shop says they're eating, or even what it looks like they’re feeding on, but what they are absolutely eating today and now. No matter what bar you fish with, THAT’S the best way I know of for dishing up the kind of spreads that schools of tuna climb all over and cover you on and to me, that's the object when it comes to selecting effective spreads of any kind of lures for tunas, be they regular lures or spreaderbars.
Do it right and multiples will be far more prevalent than single or double stops. 99% of the time, consistent singles and doubles are a sure sign of something lacking in the spread and truth-be-told, that is often too few of the right sized lures and too many of the wrong sized ones. I encourage those of you who find multiples the exception, instead of the rule that they should be, to think back to the spreads you usually troll with an eye toward whether your lure sizes matched the hatch for those days (and if you haven't been checking the stomachs, please start doing so), or if they were a mish mash of sizes and types. If you haven't been doing so, try determining the day’s prey target, load your pattern up with bars with that size teasers on them (and bigger, “predator” type chasebaits if you are on the fish but the bite isn’t on), give this a solid try and I’m confident that you will be amazed and happy with the results.
Unless you are trying to pick off a blue marlin that is also targeting your tunas, it just doesn't make sense to troll lures that aren't the same size or close to it of the ones that the fish are feeding on - especially tuna, which can be incredibly picky.
All of this probably applies just as well to giants, but let’s face it, one of the many differences between the gorillas and the rest of the tunas is that if you catch one, no matter what kind of spread you are trolling, you are usually done and have had a great day!
It’s a different story when it comes to the tunas that most of us fish for, even including the smaller bluefins. Please bear this in mind when you think about tunas and lures and such. Catching one is better than none, but most of us are out to catch a pile of them and we want and need to make the most of every school or pod that we raise and having (especially) the right size lures in the water when they come is a huge factor in being successful at that. Years of doing it wrong finally taught a bullheaded old fisherman – me – that lesson and once I learned and applied it, multiples wound up being by far the most common stops for us.
Just as it is wrong to do so with regular lures, it is a mistake to ignore both the small and the big size ends of the bar spectrum, but unfortunately both are in fact ignored by a lot of bar fishermen for some strange reason and they only run one size and/or color bar and lose out a lot more than they realize when it comes to not catching fish because of it. It is no different with regular lures.
By “big”, I am not talking about the number of squids on a bar. Big numbers of squids on a bar don’t hurt, except for adding weight, pulling pressure and tangle possibilities, but we have found that they aren’t needed for a bar to be deadly effective. Cutting down on them results in smaller, lighter, easier handling bars (both for the fisherman and the fish) that are much less prone to tangling than bars with big spreads of teasers and lighter tackle can be used. The sight of a straggler or a little predator behind a ball is a powerful trigger to gamefish, but the size of that bait ball has little or nothing to do with turning them on. They go after either type of bar with a vengeance and being one of the sharpest eyed of all fish, it doesn't take a huge pod of teasers for the tunas to spot them, so why load a bar with big numbers of teasers?
The bottom line is that the boat remains the biggest teaser of them all and the strike zone behind it is the logical place to position little pods of the right sized bait with (depending on the fish’s mood) either a straggler trying to catch up to each one, or a small predator chasing it. As I have stated many times here, I don't consider a tuna spread complete without a Toad running under it, but like all of this, that is up to you. (I remind you that I don't sell Toads and have no other motive in recommending them so strongly than because I find them so effective and am sure that you will too.)
The bars elicit the same competitive response from tunas, whether there are twenty squids, or eight or nine, with our rule of thumb being logical for both the fish and the fisherman (and your pocketbook); “the smaller the teasers on the bar, the more of them we want on them to help the fish spot them. The bigger the teasers, the less you need as far as the fish seeing and reacting to them”. We can and will make bars with however many teasers people want on them, but the ones that we sell and fish ourselves follow the above rule and having made my living dragging bars for literally thousands of days while making and testing any and all size bars convinced me of that. Many other charter captains and highly experienced captains who I am associated with and know have come to the same conclusions.
The basic point here remains that anglers who do everything possible to “match the hatch” when it comes to tuna fishing and who do what they do with regular lures and arm themselves with a logical range of bars that represent the size (and color, if you so choose) prey that the various tunas they encounter in their area feed on and who are diligent in discovering the “prey of the day” and matching it, are logically going to be among the most successful tuna catchers in their area...and they are. (And p.s., there are a lot of them out there who aren’t going to go around telling others about this. That’s how some of them remain at the top catching heap...Facts of life and I don’t blame them and was the same “back in the day”.)
Some pictures follow (no giants...like I said, they are in a world of their own and the guys who seriously chase and catch them are a very special group. Some of them are true super anglers.) that show that both the big and the especially the small ends of the size spectrum can catch big tunas (two of these happen to be bigeyes and one is a big Cabo yellowfin).
There is no doubt that even the biggest of the “smaller” tunas often get on little, right down to downright tiny baits, but if the local squids happen to be big mommas, you wouldn’t believe how small a tuna will eat one! When the big Humbolt squids come thru Cabo you can hardly catch anything on a lure or squid smaller than 20". The guys who say to use some bars with big squids (we make them up to 20” long) are absolutely right, but use them only when the little or big guys are eating the big calamari’s. As alluded to earlier, if you are fishing yellowfin and there are some blue marlin shadowing some of them, a big, 20” bar fished at the back of the pack will pick some of them off – just be sure to have that marlin bar rigged for bear and on the appropriate sized gear.
Summing up, I do hope those of you who haven't run SuperBars give them a try. Why not compare something radically different than what you now use to see what you think? Our catalog has over 150 of them with teaser sizes from 2 ½” to 20”.
First photo is an applied for new Junior world record bigeye of 227#. It was caught on a cut down, 9” Legend Lures (Roddy Hays) Enke lure.
Second photo is of a huge bigeye that has been tagged (note tag) and is about to be released (that’s right, tagged and released!). It too was caught on a very small Legend lure. That fish was lucky that it wasn't me or just about anyone else I know that caught him!
Third is a huge Cabo yellowfin caught on a bar with little, 4 1/4” squids and a 6” “predator” chasebait on it. It was one of three, 200+ ‘fins we caught that week on little bars. The two others were caught on Meatball Bars with 4” squids on them! Note how small the bar is...very light and it pulls less than most single lures.
Fourth photo is Bud Hosner and crew with a pretty typical pile of Northwest day trip albacore taken off of his 27 Grady. There are over thirty in that pile and they only represent a few hours on the fish. Like a lot of west coast anglers (where longfins are the most targeted tunas), and unlike a lot of other trollers in that area, he runs big, "east coast style" patterns targeting multiples. He gets big time multiple hookups on the very small bars that albies everywhere go nuts over, or this kind of “canning catch” wouldn’t be possible.
Come late to this thread, and no - Fred didn't tell me about it !
Quite apart from his blatant use of my photos (where the heck did you find dem, Fred ? ) I have to simply say that Fred has stated the most important rule for me when chasing tuna - match the hatch. Size, size and size are the three most important things to remember and whether you're using lures or bars, that first fish MUST be cut open.
I first started gamefishing in South Africa back in the 70's, when a ton of yellowfin or albacore would be a pretty standard catch for the small outboard-powered boats that ran 30 miles or more offshore from Cape Point. Then, and now, some several thousand tunas later of all denominations, first thing everyday is to check the guts of that first fish. For big-eye, almost exceptionally, that size of bait is so important. Most of the many hundreds of big-eyes we caught in Madeira were feeding on small deepwater baitfish routinely and seasonally pushed to the surface by current upwellings. Our standard tuna lure in tuna season would be a 4" or 5" lure rigged with a short-shank Mustad bronzed live-bait hook (someone here will know the number). The same lure would also catch everything else that fed on the same baitfish - albies, yellowfin, skippies, dorados, spearfish, white and blue marlin, and even the odd mako. Naturally enough, when the blue marlin started to crash the party we would realise it was May and time to change tackle !!
I've used all types of bars, small and large, both traditional metal for giant bluefins and Fred's composite bars for all other species. And while they will all work at times, Fred's superbars are the only ones I bother with now - ease of use, low-speed, high-speed, no-tangle, un-breakable and great value. Nothing finer in my book - which of course is why I import them into New Zealand and sell them from the back of the shed to those in the know !!! New Zealand is a spreader bar virgin, and while it would be cheaper and easier to go the metal-bar route, I don't see the value in it when Fred's bars are available.
Awsome posts! That's hard core information. I'm left with many questions, but I'll just ask one. What exactly is a composite bar? I suspect it describes the material the bar is made from. I was under the impression titanium bars were the best. Which do you prefer? ( I guess that's really two questions)
You might wait a while for Fred's answer as he's in and out of communication a lot due to his health. I'll simply say that composite is the word he uses to describe his bars, and despite the efforts of many to find the exact same material I believe it's still classified info. I know some have got close, but after a few fish "their" bars don't work or look the same any more. All I know is you can tie a knot in one of Freds' bars, leave it a week, and when you undo it the damn thing is back fishing again before you can blink.
I tried some titanium bars a client brought on board a boat I was running in the Caribbean a couple of seasons ago, and while a vast improvement on traditional metal bars I still think they're not the same as Fred's - so my answer is I prefer Fred's. Still. And if some of you still think they're just a piece of bendy plastic with some holes drilled in them, great. Carry on thinking that and leave the fish you SHOULD be catching to us !! Ha !
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