Best teaser??

[pitch bait]

I like it but not my call it is up to yu know who.

[Seaker]

This is one of my favorites, Then it's OI Dredeges, Pins and Strips ala Cappy Say and come to think of it whater Cappy Say puts behind her..But day in and day out this has been a trusty teaser...Problem is she's the Admirals personal trainer

[Capt_John]

Here's my all around favorite teaser. I had to bunch it up to get it in one pic. It's a 5 Ilander chain w/ a hookless horse ballyhoo at the end. By far,the most bad ass teaser ever!

[Capt_John]

For big marlin....the ole' Gunga Teaser is the heat as well.

[Captain Fred Archer]

I'm partial to teasers that...

1. Represent predator fish, not bait. (Thus, The Toad). My boat shadow is my biggest teaser and looks just like a big ball of bait being chased by some hot predators (the props and wash). I run plenty of surface baits as targets for gamefish to zero in on.

2. I want that big teaser (The Toad) running underwater and swimming hard back among the bars, where it is both super visible and looking and "sounding" like an excited predator coming up from under my spread.

3. This fantastic teaser is inexpensive (downright cheap, in fact), almost indestructible and isn't bit often because fish judge it to be competition, not food and it isn't damaged by most fish bites and doesn't hurt and spook fish that hit it...It was my dear old granny who once told me, "Marlin and other fish don't hit rocks or turtles, so don't you hurt 'em with those teasers of yours if you expect to catch them, sonny boy. Make 'em soft and real feeling, ya here?"

4. My all-around (catch 'em all) spreads feature almost all spreader bars - which are in fact packs of surface teasers being chased by stragglers, little predators, or even big ones, depending on the tide stage and the species we are targeting. They are the most versatile lures of all, if you know what you're doing.

5. Daisy chains? I remember when they were the cat's uh, derierre, I mean "fanny". It was before manageable sized spreaderbars came along. A modern, lightweight, all speed spreaderbar is the evolution of the daisy chain and made it a memory as far as I'm concerned. Given the choice between a long string of lures like soldiers in a row versus a natural looking and acting pod of bait with a lot more teasers on it, both fished off of one rod, there is no decision to make as far as I'm concerned. RIP daisy chain.

6. I sometimes scatter a Cabo Tiger or Gata Gordo lure (but I admit that this is mostly because I make them and love to see fish hit them - a decade went into developing them and they are very good lures, but it is mighty hard to beat a good spreaderbar as far as I'm concerned, except for blues and blacks). The lures are always chasing little birds about three feet in front of them. (Some might call that a daisy chain...if that's the case, then I'm still using them!)

7. The teaser sizes on the bars are determined by the fish, not me. I run a mixed sized spread of bars until I catch that first tuna, dorado, wahoo, or billfish. Then the washdown hose goes down the hatch (careful with them wahoos!) and we match whatever comes out. We continue with the hose jobs during the day, just in case the menu changes. You can get no better dope on what the fish are actually eating than this.

8. I swim ballyhoo on my long riggers with birds in front of them.

9. I no longer fish stingers way back there. Literally thousands of days of tuna fishing down south convinced me that they are more than likely to hook up one of the lead fish in a school coming up your wake and then the school takes off away from the boat with the hooked unit. I still fish the stinger rigger at times, but the lure or bait is no further back than my long riggers.

10. If I see breaking tunas I will put out Zeus, pictured below. It is like throwing hand grenades in your wake. Zeus runs on a rope handline and produces hellacious explosions. Used mostly when we are targeting really big tunas and blacks or blues.

As long as you call spreaderbars "Lures", I'd give up all of the other teasers in favor of The Toad, no question whatsoever. And remember, I don't sell 'em and have no commercial motive when I say that.

When I meter deep fish, especially tunas, I run our new, lightweight Spider dredges off downriggers or planers. I also run them with 6 or 8 ounce trolling weights in front of them in the kind of rough, windy conditions that can make trolling spreaderbars and surface lures in general difficult. Those "three dimensional, underwater spreaderbars" are fish-catching gold in those and the "fish down deep" situations.

Wrapping up, I don't mean to demean those who make and sell daisy chains or those who use them. They do catch fish, no doubt, and at one time they were the first of the multiple lures that led to so many of today's primo fish catchers, such as bars, dredges and bird teasers in front of lures. They deserve a lot of credit for that. It's just that the latter have displaced them from the top of the "immitating a school of baitfish" standpoint. And from where I stand in the tuna tower, today's patterns that are just chock full of "bait" are that many times better.

Please be sure to try that Toad, whether you have it chasing a squid or not. If that impresses you, learn how to booby trap it and try "multiple lure/automatic bait and switch drop back fishing." Hoo baby! That's a whole 'nother subject!

The leading edge is not a place...it is a state of mind.