THE PROOF OF THE PUDDIN'

[Deep C]

Fred
I too am not the anti troller demon from hell. I have been trolling the buggers with good success for twenty years but its a condition thing. When the condition calls for it I troll, hell I sell 50,000 + lures a year, I certainly have the designs. But its not an all the time thing. WHen the early season fish are piled up on a tiny spot where they can wait between raids on the bluefish schools and are already chock full then I'll go short stroke them with the bucket. I'll put that fluttering split tail right in their face so they can't say no.
If the bait supply is lean and they are scattered I troll. If the drift won't lay me up on very specific pinpoint spots I will troll. I may even troll part of the day tomorrow.
I'm not saying don't troll. I'm saying to carry out all the options you can and be able to switch in a blink. Nothing sucks worse than going out with a great plan and having no back up if the other styles are the only one producing.

Like my marlin fishing. I have a spread of plastic, meat, mix at the ready. Then go it one better with Blue intensive or white intensive or yet another mixed spread. Yes I do pretty well selling plastic and I have won a lot of money dragging it but I'm also a realist enough to know that some days they want meat. So when I leave the dock all guns are loaded... I have typically seventy pieces of plastic and five kinds of meat I can work with for what "that moment" calls for... Some days I get so anal that I change spreads between up sea and down sea legs. To stay in the winners circles it takes that kind of labor...

[Vulpinus]

Good points and I agree with all of it... except I firmly believe that thresher shark fishing is best done with the motor in gear.


Even if the bait is stacked in one small area- I'd rather troll through it. Visualize what is going on underwater when the bait is balled up with sharks feeding on it- a lure or bait swimming against the grain of the school really stands out. Makos are a different story... and most of my experience is with threshers.

[Deep C]

The bulk of our eastern (mid atlantic) threshers are either hanging close to bottom working sea bass or working square mile areas of bluefish... More often near structure and hanging deep. Frequently I lock horns with em in the deepr pits near where I find the makos. I believe they are in the holes looking up while the mako is high looking low . Again our structure here is so puny in comparison to the west coast sea mounts so trolling can be tough.
They however present a great troll victim when they get in on herring or bunkers that are balled up... They also resopond well to trolling late in the season when we are looking for giant bluefin tunas...

[Captain Fred Archer]

Roger, C,

We're both saying the same thing, only starting from the opposite ends. The best fishermen are the most versatile because the oceans change from day to day and from hour to hour. I just didn't want to get labeled as a one dimensional fisherman, something I'm sure as hell not!

I recognize how difficult change is for most folks, especially those who don't get to fish much and are in areas where the big game fishing is seasonal and limited. It isn't automatic that those who fish a lot, learn a lot. Fact is, there are many who I term "Masters of Repitition" in my books. These are people who fish a lot, but always go about it the same way or the same few that they know. Since they fish a lot more than the average Joe and usually have good G-2 and fish where the fish are - at least 90% of the battle - they catch more fish than poor Joe, but they learn nothing while they're doing it. If one thinks that he has all of the answers, or at least enough of them, he is kidding himself, if for no other reason than gamefish populations are plummeting around the world and there are less fish to try to fool and they are generally very well fed to boot.

Fishing is like most other things in life - if you ain't moving forward, you are being passed!

The longer that I have chummed and trolled for sharks, the more that I have gone over to trolling, one of the reasons being that I can slow down my trolling to what would be a good chum drift speed, even if I have to go in and out of gear to do so. Trolling gives me all kinds of terrific options that are difficult or even impossible to achieve on the type drift that most fishermen do, or even the power chumming that is how I always chum. I have always believed that the props and noise and turbulence of the mills goes a long way towards attracting sharks. One time at night when you look directly alongside and see four or five makos lit up by phosphoresence, pacing the boat should be enough to convince anyone of this and I have not only seen it once, I have seen it many times. We night fish sharks a lot out here. We can leave the dock, be in primo mako and thresher water in no more than fifteen minutes, fish a tide and be back at the dock fifteen or twenty minutes after lines in.

I can't do all of the things that I can while I'm trolling the other way around. Whether it's hovering (I agree on the threshers versus the makos, Vulpinus), trolling at a slow or medium drift speed, bumping it up to three or four knots, running her up to seven knots between structure or temp breaks knowing that I can catch sharks at that speed and that it might just be the right one for that time, that day. I can get on and precisely follow a temp or structure break right down to turning sharp corners and checking out structure on the structure, staying on the cold or warm side of a break, depending on which one the fish like. And of course, trolling was tailor made for moving my baits and lures at speed to get those non-feeder reaction strikes when all else fails. And finally, I don't have to deal with all of the pests that often show up in a chum slick, but I can keep trolling tasty meals for the sharks that might be shadowing them with no garbage bites. Those are all good as far as I'm concerned, but that last one might be the most compelling of all.

Didn't realize that you were so involved in the lure business. Heck, I thought I knew them all! I probably know the name of the line, but didn't connect it to you. What is the name? Where is the factory? Can I get a catalog? I pride myself on keeping up with what is going on with other lure manufacturers.

As a final thought, I know that it's the wrong thread, but I didn't comment on the bait vs plastic one. Interesting, I see that we are pretty much alike in that regard too. My sail and striped marlin spreads consist of all spreaderbars with teasers and no regular marlin lures, large or small. Pitch baits are ready to rock and both long riggers have swimmer ballyhoos with hats, usually standards or mediums. PeeWee's and the like attract too many dink fish.

For blue and black marlin, horse ballies or macks on the long riggers, then a bar on a short rigger with a lure, one of my Big FatBoys, usually all-black on the other short rigger chasing a Dirty Bird on the other short, then a blue/green/chartreuse/silver Legend Andromeda (made by Roddy Hays, famed Madera grander catcher. We once caught 27 blues and one black, plus some tunas and other stuff on the "Andy" in seven or nine (can't remember) straight days down in Cabo - so there's always at least one and sometimes two out whenever we go for the big girls) chasing a Dirty bird on the long flat and either a Big FatBoy, Bart Extreme Breakfast, or another Andy on the short flat. In my case, roughly seventy percent of the big marlin come on the lures, but a solid thirty percent (that's a lot if you don't catch them!) come on the meat. My naturals are always on wire because of those mondo Cabo wahoos.

Phew! Time to go sautee me up some nice thresher almondine. Lord have mercy!