Fighting white marlin...

[MikeFisher]

Arthur,
check with the guys around your docks for present seasons/spezies and pull the baits for the spezies which should be around that time.
of course you can always run into anything unexpected, that's fishing, that's what we love on the water.
i don't know your billfish seasons on the golf, never fished there, but good luck for ya to get 'em all.
fishing is just about beeing patient, patient, patient...

[arthurj]

Mike,
There are blues, whites and a few sails being caught right now. So you never know what might come eat. That is why I am having a hard time with my decision. I think a lot of people around here pull a mix of plastic and meat, which I have a hard time doing. I have a hard time finding that common speed where they both pull right.
I guess this is morphing into a spread question, but to cover blues and whites, would you say throw out two bigger plastics up close for the blues and ballyhoo on the riggers and down the middle? Sound like an ok plan?

[MikeFisher]

it is an o.k. plan Arthur.
i assume you fish alone on your boat, we fish crews of 2-3 guys, so we have an advantage in the fast reaction. we also have the mixed times, white still present and blue started season, sail we get (no big quantity) during both seasons, so if we fish 2 lures close to the boat for blues and we get a blue appearing on one of the longer lines, we try to use the long one with it's ballyhoo as a teaser, you can drive a marlin crazy when the bait makes a fast move right before he can get it in it's mouth, like that we tease him closer to the boats, same time we bring the lure back more close to him and let the ballyhoo disapper.
for a white coming up behind a lure we try the opposite, the lure away from his mouth, of course there's not much space for that because the lures are anyways close to the boat, and one mate has to reel in a ballyhoo fast closer to the white marlin to attract him to the ballyhoo.
a big amount on those attemts fail of course, there's anyways no perfect rule to get this fish here and that one there, but sometimes it works, that's fishing.
for all Billfishes the spray is the important main point, you have to attract them to come up in the spray, and for that you need a lot of movement.
to target white marlin i pull like described above 5 baits, that's along with 2 long teaser lines(1 off each outrigger) and at least one, mostly 2 more hookless teasers from the transom, but that's for pure white marlin season, they come up in the spray, and in case they chase a teaser you lead them to the next ballyhoo with hooks and let the hookless one disappear.

for the mixed season, if you are fishing 5 lines i think on the kind of boat shown on the signature, i would pull 2 naked ballyhoos on the longriggers, 2 ballyhoo combos on the short riggers and 1 blue marlin lure in the center close to 1 or 2 big teasers at the transom.

when you are offshore next time?
let us know how it worked, i am myself on the dry this week, i get a new boat in on thursday, so i am more travelling now than close to my homewaters, but that will thanks god change again the upcoming weekend, i still have some of the fishing outfit missing, i know it's hard to tell that to you guys with tackle/fishing shops every 50 yards close to the water, but i have to travel a lot just to get 4 penn intl 30's together with their rods at this moment, but today it looked like i got lucky, i have a guy coming in wednesday who promised to bring the stuff.
we have no tackle store on the whole east coast and no REAL one which i woould call a tackle store for the whole island.
keep us up to date

[snakeeyes]

NOW THIS IS A GREAT READ, THANKS GUYS, BUT PLEASE DONT STOP..
WHAT TYPE OF TEASERS ARE YOU USING WHEN TARGETING WHITES , ALSO HOW ABOUT DREDGES, WHAT TYPE AND WHAT BAITS ON THE DREDGES..

[arthurj]

I'm going to pull a bunch of naked ballyhoo with circles, guatamala style the next time I go out. That should be thursday, and then again saturday, I will let you guys know what happens. Let me ask another question, as far as ballyhoo rigged guatamala style with a circle, what if a fat yellowfin decided to come up and eat one of them, have you had good hookup ratios with tuna and ballyhoo rigged with circles?

[MikeFisher]

the Tuna question somebody else has to answer, i never got a tuna on a circle rig.
the main reason is the fact that since 3-4 years we have very few yellowfins around, i don't know where and what happen to them, the years before we had plenty of them during blue marlin season, small yellowfins and bonitos are a great bait for blue marlin, fishing close to their schools brings good chances to raise a big blue marlin, but for our local waters tunas are gone.
for the teasers:
for white marlin we use each outrigger teaser line a small lure with a hookless deadbait ballyhoo behind, the one from the transom is a buoy with a big lure or a big rubber fish behind.
for blue marlin we use on all teaser lines big lures and rubber calamares, than more movement they make in the spray than better they are, place your baits with the hooks right behind and over them, just as far that they don't mess up with the teaser line getting hooked.

[BTH284]

For targeting whites and if there are blues around which this time of year there should be. I have been taught that ilander pro's or moldcraft chugger (standard or senior) on the short riggers with horse or spanish or squid for the blue ones plus this will tease the whites as well. Then naked dinks on the longs, flats and shorts.

My teaser set up would be double chained ilander pro's or b/w lander chain with naked horse trailer then strip dredge or holographic mullet dredge on the other side.

[arthurj]

I thought I would give you guys and update on our last fishing trip. We heard the yft were at the rigs so we decided to change our plans to try for a white. We got one fish that was barely legal then a nice one that went 60lbs.
But...back to the subject of pulling dink ballyhoo for whites, maybe I am becoming a believer. While we fished the rigs a friend of a friend who pulls nothing but ballyhoo had 5-6 shots at whites in a different area, only managed to get one to the boat. Still, 5-6 shots, I guess I will start pulling more ballyhoo for them. I'm going to rig a bunch guatamala style next trip.

[MikeFisher]

yeah Arthur, and keep us up to date how it went.
i myself had a bad weekend, been sheduled to fish 2 full days all saturday and sunday long, don't like the full moon for billfishing daytime(FM been sunday 29th), but i couldn't get a better shedule.
saturday we fished in the early hours the 6-8 nmls area off the Astrom wreck together with the boats which been on the last day of the Cabeza de Toro Marlin tournament.
besides a few dorados we found nothing there, even the tournament boats got only 2 blues in the spray, no hook ups.
we went out to the outer rim of an offshore bank, fishing 16-25nmls ofshore over 500-800fath's waters and found nothing neither, 1 small 15lbs wahoo(******* hooked himself on a monster lure) and 1 more dorado.
so in the afternoon we decided to try again the 6-8 nmls area in front of the wreck, the tournament boats reported 9 blues in the spray with 4 going to the points, a bad day for 25 boats in the area, but at least they found blue marlin, so we went closer to shore again.
around 3PM we found a big wood floating on the surface, passing it we saw a big school of very small dorados, 3-10lbs class, perfect baitfishes for blue marlin, so the decision been done fast, we stay here and be patient to see what's coming up to get dorados.
we fished the spot for 35 minutes, taking only 2 3lbs dorados out to prepare them as livebaits, when we passed the wood again without spotting the school.
an other turn and there we saw why they've been disappeared, a nice blue lady (350-400lbs) hit the surface in the middle of the school around a 1/4 mile behind the boat to our port side, taking dorados very aggressively.
so an other turn and an other turn and on 4PM we got her in the spray, taking the big lure on the 80lbs Shimano with full drag on, starting to spool line off like hell and jumping like crazy, it sorrily took no more than 4 minutes and the fight been over, on an other jump we saw her spitting the doublehook set out and away she's gone, sure not coming back today, she's been marked.
on the way in we got a small blue in 50ft shallow water taking a naked ballyhoo on the portside longrigger, a short 15 minutes fight before the release, not the success i've been looking for fishing all day long.
looking forward to come back sunday morning it got worse, late night a family problem came up and i had to cancel the trip, so nothing in no spray for sunday, a day on the dry.
hope you get more to report from your next trip.
i will be offshore again this thursday, friday and saturday all day long, moon phase is right, hopefully i get something worth a report, too.
good luck