Building a spreader bar

[Zummie]

Thank you all for all the good advice. This forum board can be really awesome, especially when I can't get out to fish.

My wife tells me that if I put half the time, energy and passion into her that I put into fishing she would be a lot happier. But then, 25 years ago before we got married she said she "loved" fishing and country music.

[Zummie]

Building the spreader bar. As you can see from the picture I used 14 Sea Striker 12" rainbow squids that I trimmed back to 10" . Except for the last one in each row I put a float inside each one. The last one in row gets a 1.5 oz. lead. Used 400 lb. leader for the main line and 250lb. leader for all the other rows. Got a bird from Sterling thats at the top. Planning to try it out on the West Coast of Mexico next month. Any advice/modifications/suggestions appreciated.

[Squidnation]

Great stuff Zummie. I know I am a little late to this thread but I have been away. I use to put weights in the squids when I first started. They worked fine raising fish. But then I was on a charter boat called the Pelican out of OI North Carolina with Capt Arch Bracher. We started talking about spreader bars and to my surprise he told me that he uses spreader bars quite a bit while tuna fishing. I was floored. Spreader bars in NC?

Any his first question to me was,"Do they Float?" The need to float. Bar ain't no good if it doesn't float. His reasoning was. In NC they troll their bars way back. If they catch a fish on something other then the bar then they want to keep working the bar even while the boat is stopped or slowed. Can't work a bar if it is sunk. They keep popping it or just leave it floating waiting for drifter bites. He said they get lots of drifter bites that way. Another reason is visibility of the bar when a fish is on another bait. If the bar is sunk you don't know where it is while fighting another fish. So you have to either reel it in or take your chances on it not tangling your hooked fish. You can work around it if you can see it.

So from that point on we always put floats in our bars. Not sure if they have raised any more or less fish since I tend to pull my bars on the flat lines and it really doesn't matter if they float or not since they are so close to the boat.

One other tip that he taught me (mind you this was a long time ago) was to always always always use a soft plastic hooked bait such as a white squid or a soft green machine. We use to use meat like and islander/hoo combination. In a nice way he told me that was stupid.. He said that fish hits your hooked natural bait and destroys it, he aint coming back. But put a white squid or soft green machine and he can hit it until he finally gets hooked because it won't look any difference. We seem to have great success with our hard green machines or a different colored squid.

Just my 2 cents. or should I say Capt Bracher's 2 cents

[Anthony of the ARK]

Wow that boat was nice and clean. Wtf no yelling? unbelievable. Ill have to check out the unedited copy of that.

Ive always put a 1/2-3/4 ounce weight in the last squid in string and floats in all the rest. The reason being is that on rough days the bars tend to foul more, the weight is there to keep the last squid in the water in order to create drag, this keep the back squid from flopping around onto of each other rough day, floats usually out number weights 2 to 1 which still allows the bars to float

[Zummie]

Wow that boat was nice and clean. Wtf no yelling? unbelievable. Ill have to check out the unedited copy of that.

Ive always put a 1/2-3/4 ounce weight in the last squid in string and floats in all the rest. The reason being is that on rough days the bars tend to foul more, the weight is there to keep the last squid in the water in order to create drag, this keep the back squid from flopping around onto of each other rough day, floats usually out number weights 2 to 1 which still allows the bars to float

I followed this same line of reasoning. Of the 14 squid in this bar, 9 have floats and the 5 end ones have a weight. I was planning on a different colored armed squid (I have some the same size and some larger) as the chase bait hooked on to the swivel in the last squid.