short corner lures

[Captain Fred Archer]

I am currently wrapping up a marlin fishing book that thoroughly analyzes traditional marlin fishing lures, baits and techniques that I guarantee you is going to stir up a hornet's nest the likes of which no one has ever seen before.

I am honored to have a segment by Captain Roddy Hays in the book and what he has to say shows why he is one of the leading billfish experts ever.

I started by looking at the facts when it comes to lure, and even natural bait fishing. Just looking at artificial lures, especially something that billfishermen have pretty much accepted forever for some strange reason - hookup and catch ratios.

First, they are different. If you consider success hooking a billfish up, whatever you average for an average hookup ratio is enough for you. But few play the game just to hook billfish, they play it to catch and hopefully release the fish that they hook. This is the less spoken of (for a good reason) landing ratio. In the end, this is the most important ratio of them all.

Prevailing wisdom generally puts raw hookup ratios at about 33%. That's the way it is, but it sucks, period. There has to be a better way, and there is.

The landing ratio is always less than the hookup ratio that many anglers speak of. Depending mostly on the rigging, the landing ratio can easily be as low as 50% of the hookup one. Things that lower the landing ratio are mainly jumped or pulled off fish which, if you stop and think about it, goes right back to the same reason for the poor hookup ratios that most people have in the first place.

There are near 100% ratio lure techniques that simply obliterate the low ones experienced with what are in fact poor hooking traditional marlin lures and they are revealed in detail in this book.

As for the subject of this thread, the short corners have been the hot billfish holes on any boat that I have ever owned or run. Many other captains that I know well have found the same thing. Whether you buy into them being the best billfish holes or not, I'm sure most would agree that they are primo locations for billfish. That being the case, what you run there is mighty important.

Myself personally, I don't want a lure/lures that spend time up in the white water of the wake. I have dived and watched lures running in all positions and have seen for myself that smoky lures that spend time up in the wash disappear from sight. I have also learned that short lures with relatively long down cycles get bit better than ones that have short down cycles and spend a lot of time up in the white stuff.

What I have always really wanted was a short corner lure that dove under the surface trash and ran three-to-five feet under the white stuff, and stayed there, where fish could easily see and hit it. And I wanted it to have what we call "The FatBoy Wiggle", a tight, wiggling action similar to that of a Marauder or Rapala.

With some heavy help from a real hydrodynamics expert and CAD/CAM technology, we've got it. We call it GraveDigger. A twelve inch and a ten inch "shorty" are finished except for some skirting issues we are working on. An eight inch model is on its way.

GraveDigger is NOT the answer to the landing ratio thing that the book is about (I know that sounds strange, but it will make sense once the book is out), but it is one helluva short corner lure that has not only done great on bills during field testing, it has done a number on the other pelagics and thresher and mako sharks too.

A short corner lure that I really like that also runs and stays under the surface trash is our Spider min-dredge. 'Nuff said on that for now.

The top GraveDigger has the skirts rigged upside down because it is one of mine and that's how I rig my skirts. On the bottom you can see "The FatBoy Wiggle" that we incorporate in all of our lures.

Meantime, you lure guys think about the hookup and landing ratios you are used to on billfish on artificials (and even bait) and see if you might be interested in getting them up near 100%.