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Every time I try to troll for tuna here (Albacore and school size bluefin - up to 50lb) and the sea is calm I can't get a single strike. Same place, previous day, with a nice 12-15mhp wind and some leftover waves from days before I went 3 for 3 in 30 minutes!
I thought it was just a coincidence (third time it happens!) but after asking the other guys NOBODY got a strike with the dead calm seas (although I could see fish jump here and there so they were in the area).
Anybody experience a similar situation? Is there a remedy for this (except not going out with dead calm seas )
Lure depth, distance, speed, lure type ??? Whatever... I will try it. HELP!
when rough, i like the spread as close to the boat as possible. i spread it out further when it is calm. Also try a lure or two below the surface when it is calm.
Are you scaling back on your leaders in calm conditions? Might be something to think about...like say 80 pound flurocarbon and dead/swimming baits like split-billed ballyhoo
Sea conditions do not affect fish's feeding periods, nor do they make them any wiser or dumber. Wisdom or the lack of same apply to animals capable of thought, which fish aren't. They are WAY down on the brain size and capabilities curve.
Sounds to me like you fished an area at or around a feeding period, then went back to the same area and fished during the much longer periods of inactivity between feeding periods. Fish aren't like humans; when it is time to feed, they feed and they are very efficient about it, so feeding periods are usually quite-to-very short. When they aren't feeding, they have zero interest in food or hunting it and they do not "snack".
Bear in mind that a single lure represents one thing and one thing only to fish - food. An individual meal that the fish will take when they are feeding, but that they could care less about when they aren't.
Between feeding periods, which is basically between the tide changes, the best way that I know of to catch fish is to take advantage of their competitive natures and inherent prey drives by using lures with teasers, like a Little Bird in front of them, or the teasers on a spreaderbar with a bigger squid or lure after the bait pod. Here, the object is to attract the curious, but non-feeding fish into your pattern and then have one or more of the school's competitive instincts fired up by seeing the fake "chases" that you have created and they attack the chasing lure to KILL not EAT it. This often creates a chain reaction with other fish in the school and you wind up with several strikes and hookups instead of the none you were likely to get if you were just trolling "food" - single lures or baits.
Remember, tuna are universally school fish and when one comes into your spread, there are always others, which is why this "turning on other fish in the school" thing happens, and happens a lot. Also remember that the baitfish are schooling fish too, so the more you can create images of natural looking pods of them, the more natural and enticing your pattern will be.
Finally, crank up the competitive "feel" of your pattern by making and running a Toad Teaser under the lures, chasing a hollow squid teaser the same size as the Birds in front of your lures or the teasers on your spreaderbars.
Since you were seeing fish and bait on your last three, empty trips, you had fulfilled rule number one of catching fish - find them and fish where they are. The next rule is to "match the hatch" and run lures that represent what the fish are feeding on - not what you caught them on the last time, especially if you only caught a few, but what those fish actually had in their stomachs. You don't even have to cut fish to find this out...run a washdown hose down their throats and wash out the stomach contents and that will tell you exacty what they are eating and you'll know what size lures to run. You will catch a heckuva lot more fish by matching the hatch than you will just running the same size and kind of lures all of the time.
Follow the instructions given above during the inactive periods between tide changes and you will pick up some fish during those otherwise difficult times.
Finally, pay close attention to the tide changes and if you know where fish are, be on that water for the hour before and hour after the changes take place. The fish and everything else will feed sometime during that period, with the most likely time being just before or after the actual change.
If there is going to be a change shortly after you planned on coming home, stay for it. If there is going to be one a little earlier than you had planned on arriving on your location, leave earlier to get there for the change.
Don't worry about sea conditions affecting the fish; they're underwater and short of a howling gale, aren't affected by what's going on up top - ditto for calm conditions.
I hope that you follow this advice, but whether you do or not is up to you, of course.
I downsize my leaders to 80 ld fluoro and have experienced the same thing. When its slick calm the fishing seems much more difficult, I've heard the same thing from charter boat captains and mates I've fished with.
On calm days big chuggers that spend more time in the air than in the water work better for us but when it's flat calm it can get frustrating watching them jump all over the place and not hook up
Captain Fred Archer - 10/12/2007 8:46 AM Finally, pay close attention to the tide changes and if you know where fish are, be on that water for the hour before and hour after the changes take place. The fish and everything else will feed sometime during that period, with the most likely time being just before or after the actual change.If there is going to be a change shortly after you planned on coming home, stay for it. If there is going to be one a little earlier than you had planned on arriving on your location, leave earlier to get there for the change.
Nice post, Captain Fred. How do you determine when the tide is going to change 10 or 20 or 50 or more miles offshore? Is there a way to calculate based on the shore tides? Do any GPS units have a built-in function to calculate the local tide (mine doesn't)?
I have the same experience and find that the fish are more boat shy and leader shy, especially tuna. When its calm:
Use flourocarbon or mamoi blue to try to get as invisible as possible
Troll live baits while chumming live bait to get them going, and troll farther back-scrape the chummer's eye with your fingernail just before you throw them out so that they swim in frantic small circles on top attracting attention and strikes.
Troll baits with a kite, skipping them on the surface in front of the school like a flying fish
Cast to boilers and jumpers using surface lures with a fast retrieve.
Okay, I'm going to try one more time here. I'm not going to write anything original, like I did one my last post on this thread. Seems that was pretty much a waste of time for the most part and that's okay. But I'll be danged if I'm going to leave this discussion stating or even implying by my silence that I think that this "flat water" thing, if you are fishing it during a non-feeding period, can be solved by running single lures or baits (trolling lures at average trolling speeds here, not drifting or slow trolling bait - that wasn't how this thread got started as far as I can see) further back, on lighter leader, changing to big surface chuggers, chumming live bait, or any of that.
The implication here is that doing some or all of those things up there will make non-feeding fish eat. I absolutely do not agree.
Here's an excerpt from one of my books (I won't say which one, for fear of getting the Spam Rangers all hot and bothered), that addresses just part of the discussion here. Other parts of the issue at hand are discussed in depth in the book and like I tried to do in my earlier post, reasons why what is recommended are given for the advice given, as well as reasons why other altenatives aren't such good ideas.
When it comes to fishing, there should be a reason or reasons why someone should or shouldn't do things and I offer up the ones that I base my advice on for agreement, disagreement, or whatever.
I remind you that this is written in a book and in no way is a response put together for this thread. I have removed some parts that I'm sure would be offensive to some posters. I'd like this to remain a peaceful discussion. Here goes...
One of the great powers of the bars is that they are an amazing representation of a bait pod instead of an unnatural single lure or one chasing a teaser, or a daisy chain. Both of those are good, but they can’t remotely approach the natural fish-raising scene produced by spreader bars.
Spreader bars are not only very natural; trolling decent numbers of them creates a huge amount of baits in the spread that can be seen by and that attract schooling fish from both deep and far away. This is simply because you are offering fish a bunch of food instead of enough for only one or two fish in the school that have to run all over the spread and compete with each other to catch. That is a dramatic difference in presentation and teaser “chum”!
“CHUMMING” THE HECK OUT OF THE FISH
That is exactly what you do when you run a full or mostly full spread of bars. Just as it is when chumming with live or dead bait, the more the merrier as far as how much “chum” you want going for you. Unlike regular chumming or chunking with the real stuff that the fish can eat and get filled up with, the sky’s the limit when it comes to bars because there is zero real protein in this chum!
“CHUMMING? WITH ARTIFICIALS?
AIN’T THET AGIN’ THU RULESES?”
Sure, buddy, you’re right; this isn’t real chum that we’re using here, it’s artificial stuff, but before you start pooh-poohing this form of chumming and saying that it isn’t really chumming but something else, let me ask you to do something. Show me where the Fishing Rule Book says that chum has to be live, dead, chunked up or ground up fish or it should not be considered chum. POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE SECTION REMOVED.
That’s long enough! You aren’t going to find anything in the proverbial Rule Book that says that chum, especially chum used when trolling, has to be real fish or fish parts. In fact, you’ll find the use of natural chum when trolling right at the beginning of that first section of The Rule Book, because tossing real chum into a trolling pattern to attract fish is a usually non productive. Why?
First and foremost, many trollers don't carry live bait, or enough of it to dole out while they're trolling in the first place. And live chum is primarily used while drifting, anchored, or slow trolling, not at regular trolling speeds.
In the case of regular trolling of lures and natural baits, if it is live chum it will…
a. Swim away as soon as it hits the water.
b. Fish that do chase it are going to go where it goes, not to the boat.
c. Get eaten by birds.
d. Get eaten by trash fish.
e. Hide under the boat for a while – then swim away.
f. Be a size that the big fish aren’t feeding on.
g. The only decent fish of the day will eat the chum, get full and swim away. (Don’t worry – you won’t even know it!)
h. Cost you a bundle in time or money.
i. Die on you and since you aren’t a chunker or you’d be using chunks in the first place, you will run around boat, wondering what to do now! (Jeez!)
j. Drop somewhere where you don’t see it and the next weekend you have a world-class maggot and fly ranch going on your boat. Your kid ralphs.
Or, if you are chumming with chunks they will,
a. Sink before they attract any surface fish.
b. Because they are sinking, cause fish to follow your back trail down and away from, not toward the moving boat.
c. Get eaten by birds and trash fish.
d. Attract sharks when you aren’t fishing for sharks and maybe chum one in that eats a fish that you are fighting. It will probably be the only decent fish that you hook that day.
e. You don’t catch fish while chunking and trolling and run around the boat, wishing that you had some live chum. (Ah, jeez!)
f. Drops somewhere where you don’t see it and the next weekend you have a world-class maggot and fly ranch going on your boat. Your wife barfs.
“CHUMMING” WITH SPREADERBARS
1) If you use spreader bars, you are actually chumming with artificial lures. The good things about them are,
a. You buy them once and use them over and over again for years. That makes them a tremendous value compared to buying bait – MUCH BETTER! In fact, RIDICULOUSLY BETTER!
b. There is no way that they can stink up your boat and cause maggot and fly ranches and they cause no puking.
c. With just a few bars in different sizes and colors you always have and can select the right size “chum” to match what the game fish are actually feeding on.
d. They won’t swim away or hide under the boat.
e. They won’t sink and lead fish away from the boat.
f. Birds won’t eat this chum. (Some will try to, though!)
g. The occasional trash fish might try to bite a bar, but hey, it’s a bite – not a boil! (Cut yourself a strip bait from him.)
h. Gamefish can never get full eating spreader bars – they can only get dead or released.
i. Spreader bar chum is relentless and will patiently swim along exactly where you want it in perfect positions behind your boat every hour of the day, every day of the week and in all sea conditions and at all speeds.
NO, THAT AIN’T CHUM, BABY...
THAT’S WAY BETTER THAN CHUM!
I will speak no more on this aspect of the allure of the spreader bar. If the above hasn’t caused you to want to run out, get a couple of sets and start “chumming while you troll”, nothing will and you are on your own!
Remember, another big deal with spreaderbars is that they don’t just catch feeding fish. That chase bait herding a pod of bait turns on non-feeder fish of all kinds and they hit out of aggression, anger, competitiveness, territoriality and stuff like that. Neither live nor dead bait can accomplish that. We’ve all seen it; when fish aren’t hungry, they don’t eat. These are the same reasons why the big fish hit lures with in-line teasers, but spreaderbars offer a much bigger, more visible and more compelling target than the lures with the in-line teasers. They also put a lot more “chum” in the water than lures with teasers.
Of course one of the beauties of the bars is that they also catch like crazy when the fish ARE feeding. They are real two-edged swords, which is why I catch so many fish on ‘em. I can run them either flat or off riggers at warp speed. In Cabo I catch a lot of bar wahoo and other fish in ballyhoo bar spreads at regular and fast speeds.
That's the end of the excerpt. I remind you that I am only one of many makers spreaderbars. Mine are named in the book, but not here.
No, I don't think that spreaderbars are the be-all and end-all of fishing. Yes, I do believe that they are right at the very top of all lures, especially when it comes to schooling, pelagic fish. As good as they are, though, they will not and cannot make non-feeding fish eat and are just like single lures on light leader, big or small, close are way back from the boat, regardless of sea conditions. Bars can, along with a very small number of other lure configurations, stimulate fish into striking, not biting, during those long periods of inactivity when it comes to feeding.
I remind the gentleman who quoted what "charter captains and mates" told him about calm water that I too was a charter captain of long standing in the fish rich waters of Cabo San Lucas. I ran a very popular, high end charterboat on a year-round basis, fishing an average of five days a week for marlin, sails, tuna, dorado, wahoo and others. Like Kona, Cabo waters are known for their usually calm conditions, including many glorious flat-calm days, especially in the mornings. I'd have starved down there if this "fish don't bite in flat calm conditions" argument held water.
That didn't happen. Some of our best days ever were in lake-like sea conditions, as were some of our worst. Likewise, we had great days in nasty sea conditions and bad ones too. Fish are fish and understanding them and doing what it takes to get them to bite or strike is the core of the game, regardless of sea conditions.
For the fellow who wondered about determining when the tide changes happen offshore, my advice is to consult some Tide sites for information on that. There is a formula that can be used to determine precisely when tide changes occur inland, offshore, or anywhere else. I used to use it back when I was a tournament bass fisherman (and many top bassers use them today), but down south I just took the published charts that listed the times at ports up and down the coast, took the time for the one most directly inshore from us (usually less than twenty miles away) and took that as tide time for where I was. It was close enough that it didn't matter that it was spot on the money. Start keeping logs and include the tide changes and bite times and you will be blown away about how true what I am saying about the feeding periods being at those times really is.
Tide times are the first question of my many charter captain associates, followed by satellite temp and chloro charts. Those two pretty much add up to where it's going to happen and when.
Thank you captain, and all others, for your input.
My instinct (and the wisdom of the ages) did (and does) lead me toward what the captain states about calm seas trolling.
Spreader bars it is then (never used one so I got some reading to do). Based on your experience captain, do you think increasing the prop wash in calm seas helps the non-feeding fish get more excited about spreaders/teasers etc or does it make it more difficult for them to see them?
I must admit though, that the boat spooking the fish theory has crossed my mind many times. This is because, with a little wind, I can get as close as 40-60 yards from the surface feeding/jumping schools while in calm conditions 200 yards is probably the best.
Boy, I got a lot to learn.
Thanks everyone. Keep them comming
Unlike you I do not have much luck with $100-$200 spreader bars, practically none to be honest when used in Mexico. I consider them teasers that are a pain to handle. I also do not sell them like you.
I have raised fish for a living, fished a bit, and think I have a fair understanding of what makes a fish bite more often.
Presentations that match the hatch or their usual diet + smell + fleeing, frantic or erratic behavior when the preditor is near, + vibration that carries some distance like sound when not seen+ school feeding reaction seen from a distance and lastely the right shade or color are the things that triggers a strike from a hungry fish, or a fish that knows he will be hungier in a bit if he doesn't make the effort when presented with an easy target.
Tell me, how many of these qualities does a single lure or speader bar exhibit?
As far as Yellowfin are concerned they eat around 25% of their body weight a day when young, so as far as I am concerned they can be induced to start eating if they see the right presentation almost any time of the day or night, especially if they see something that looks like a flying fish on top buzzing are around enough till they get anoyed or interested.
So live bait to me is better than artificials 90% of the time once the fish are located by a trolling strike or on your fish finder over structure. I have thrown away duffel bags of lures and money and now have just a couple of spreads to sect a few spreads designed for Bills, Tuna, Dorado, and wahoo for dark and bright sky conditions, and this still takes up a considerable amount of room on my boat. But I haven't bought much these last few years since going to live bait in a declining fishery where I have improved my catches with more, and larger fish.
Using live chum is not a secret. The long range fllet, commercial fisherman, and serious recreational fishermen have used it with unequaled success for years. If you don't take it with you, I personally think you are wasting your time, most of the time.
Injuring your live bait that you chum makes it spin frantic, and an injured fish that is an easy target will trigger an attack from a fish that is not very hungry as he knows it is a sure easy kill. Fish are not smart, but their survival depends on succesful hunts.
So I guess everyone has their own opinions about what makes a fish react in different stages of hunger, but going invisible, trolling farther away from the boat in calm seas, using good strong live baits, casting skipping lures and chuming injured live bait has worked well for me when they are not quite as hungry, cost me less, made me handle and maitain a lot let gear, and thats The Hull Truth.
Live bait is the natural enemy of all guys that produce or sell lures, IMO.
With all due respect, I am convinced that I catch more fish when it is rougher. I base this on 20 years experience and I will not believe that the only reason I do not catch fish in calm water is because that is conincidently a non-feeding period. 20 years of coincidence doesn't make sense to me. I do believe there is less disturbance in the water and the fish become shy. Although the underwater world may be similar whether it is calm or stormy, 90% of my baits are on the surface and surface conditions do affect the presentation, IMHO.
Without making a thesis of this, I simply speed up and run louder lures. Speeding up is intended to cause a little more disturbance so as to "hide" the baits a little and to cause an instinctive reaction by the fish. Louder, flashier, splashier lures for the same reason, trying to catch the fishes attention and cause an instinctive reaction.
Caveats, we are not targeting tuna here because there just aren't many here and I rarely fish spreader bars due to our main target which is wahoo. Nothing ruins a day more than running a spreader bar or dredge and having a kingfish or wahoo destroy it in a matter of seconds. Even worse when it happens more than once in a day. Also, we do not fish live baits like on the West Coast.
With all due respect, I am convinced that I catch more fish when it is rougher. I base this on 20 years experience and I will not believe that the only reason I do not catch fish in calm water is because that is conincidently a non-feeding period. 20 years of coincidence doesn't make sense to me. I do believe there is less disturbance in the water and the fish become shy. Although the underwater world may be similar whether it is calm or stormy, 90% of my baits are on the surface and surface conditions do affect the presentation, IMHO.
Without making a thesis of this, I simply speed up and run louder lures. Speeding up is intended to cause a little more disturbance so as to "hide" the baits a little and to cause an instinctive reaction by the fish. Louder, flashier, splashier lures for the same reason, trying to catch the fishes attention and cause an instinctive reaction.
Caveats, we are not targeting tuna here because there just aren't many here and I rarely fish spreader bars due to our main target which is wahoo. Nothing ruins a day more than running a spreader bar or dredge and having a kingfish or wahoo destroy it in a matter of seconds. Even worse when it happens more than once in a day. Also, we do not fish live baits like on the West Coast.
I agree. At the end of 90% of my trips on rough days, more fish come to the docks. And due to rough water, these days are usually shorter.
Fish are schooling scaredy cats. Being cautious helps them to survive longer.
IMO, a nice 2 to 3 sea is much much better than flat calm. When it's flat calm we don't waste time trolling, we go bottom fishing. No saying you can't catch them, but I can't. Now a flat calm day in January, I'll take that trolling. But summer, no way. I call it the summer doldrums. Might depend on your area too.
Bugbuster, I'm not arguing with you...not with that shot of a beaut of a black Labby on your replies. Got two myself and my big male, Black Bart, is the spittin' image of yours. I showed him the pict and he wants to know where "up yonder" is and if anymore of them wabbits are awound.
And, hey, at least you believe in trolling calm water part of the year. Actually, it's pretty normal for the tuna bite to turn into a night chunk in the northeast canyons during part of the year when the tunas are deep most of the day. Daytime trolling can be tough then, rough or calm water.
Anyway, best to the pootch...that's a great shot!
Now, down to business. This thread was started by a guy fishing for albacore and school bluefin. He stated that his average trolling speed is six to seven knots. He asked for suggestions as to how he could improve his catches on flat-calm days.
I have tried to answer his question within the context he was asking it in; trolling lures, not trolling live or dead baits, not drifting and chumming live baits. As such, he belongs to a vast fraternity of offshore fishermen who fish artificial lures and natural baits and who don’t carry or use live bait, especially while trolling. So while whatever tricks of the trade can and are being used in the different world of live bait fishing may and probably do make sense, they aren’t relevant here, at least as far as I can see. Also, the area where the thread starter is fishing is not one of the few live bait venues that do exist in some places. I’d say that he represents the vast majority of the trollers in his area and in fact, most others around the world, especially for the tunas.
Not only is live bait rarely used in his part of the world, it is not available for sale, as it is in a goodly number of the relatively few areas where it is used extensively, striped bass fishermen being the notable exception. So, no disrespect intended, I didn’t and don’t see how live baiting and chumming with live bait while trolling lures at six or seven knots sticks to the subject at hand.
Some of the other suggestions, like going with splashier lures or speeding up have some merit. I have done a lot of high speed (18 knots average) trolling, especially when targeting the wahoo that were one of our Cabo specialty charters that we did a lot of because we caught a lot of that species when we targeted them. Here too, though, there was a distinctive, in fact a huge difference between our off-tide and on-tide results, regardless of sea conditions. Others may or may not have had trouble catching fish during those types of conditions, but my crews and I did not, nor did many of the other top charter crews who had to produce fish, regardless of the conditions. We would have been out of business in a heartbeat if we didn't produce during flat water situations.
An additional note here on the high speed fishing (and I repeat it) is that we did the vast majority of it in the typical calm, Cabo conditions, especially during the very early morning tides. High speed trolling is a tough proposition on a 36 footer in anything but calm conditions and we generally avoided the rough stuff when it came to that style of fishing. But make no mistake about it, whether you troll slow, regular, or high speed, you are going to catch a lot more wahoo on the tide changes than at any other time, and for some reason that I cannot fathom, my logs emphatically prove that our best wahoo fishing took place during the full moon – again, on the changes.
Bull, I hear the tongue in your cheek about me making “$100 - $200 spreaderbars” and the implication that I love them so much and recommend them so highly for that reason. Please get your facts straight if you are going to stoop to casting aspersions and insinuations, which I wish you hadn’t done.
We make and sell a grand total of 218 SuperBars, more, I think, than anyone else in the business.
Out of that 218 bars, a grand total of only 16 of them cost over $100.
We do not make a bar that even approaches $200!
And of the 16 that we do make that cost over $100, 14 cost $120 or less.
Only 8 of those wind up costing licensed charter captains over $100 after our 10% discount to our hard working, underpaid brothers.
That leaves over two hundred of our bars, the vast majority, at less than $100. But it gets a lot better than that. Until our special “Thank You Sale” for Hull members ends – AND THAT WILL BE MONDAY NIGHT, we had...
Twenty four bars that sold for UNDER $25.
Nineteen that sold for UNDER $30.
And eighteen that sold for UNDER $40.
THAT’S SIXTY ONE BARS UNDER $40!!!
NONE AT OR ANYWHERE NEAR $2OO!
AND ONLY A VERY SMALL NUMBER OVER $100!
THE REST OF OUR BARS AVERAGE UNDER $70.
Those are the facts, not the “$100 - $200” that you posted. You are talking about others there, not us. I am very proud of the facts that we make the best, most modern spreaderbars in the business and that our prices are the best, lowest ones that we can offer fishermen and they do not compare with those of others.
I am also proud of the fact that we have run a special sale for the membership here that offers many of our top models at pure wholesale prices, or forty percent off. That kind of discount has never, ever been offered to fishermen before. FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SENT FOR THE INFORMATION ON IT, THAT SALE ENDS MONDAY NIGHT.
My reputation as a fisherman is worth far more to me than selling a few spreaderbars. If they were not among the very best lures ever, I wouldn’t say that they were. I am only in the business of making them because I “re-invented” traditional bars years ago because I couldn’t stand fishing with the metal contraptions of the day, but knew the power of the concept. After I came up with what I called the “SuperBars”, a lot of friends and friends of friends and fishermen who saw us trolling and catching the heck out of fish on them asked me to make them for them. From that humble beginning, we grew into what we are today.
Like everything else, all spreaderbars are not the same. If your only experience is trolling the old fashioned, metal bars, and from what you have written I can see that is the case, I don’t think that you should go around condemning something that you know nothing about.
We absolutely creamed a broad variety of fish on the bars down in Cabo and they were without a shred of doubt, our best, most productive lures of them all. That is why we went to all SuperBar spreads when tuna fishing, and almost all SuperBar spreads when fishing for all species. It had zero to do with the fact that I made them. The charter business was no different for me than everything else I've done in my life - I tried to be the best that I could be and when it came to the lures that I ran, only the best fish catchers were used, no matter who made them...hell, I refused to sell them to anyone down there other private boaters who didn't compete with me and my best charter captain friends back then.
So you know, we consistently beat the pants off the local crews who sped around, stopping and dropping live baits in front of schools of tuna and catching none or a few while we were moving with the tuna school and doing multiple after multiple of those same fish on bars. And I repeat, we did this on a consistent basis.
Again, I don’t know about where you fish, but in Cabo it isn’t unusual at all for the crews to repeatedly cast live baits in front of tailing and sleeping marlin without getting a sniff from the fish. I personally have been aboard a top Cabo charterboat, the thirty three Blackfin “Tail Chaser” with owner Chuck Baker and two of his fleet captains, Lalo and his son Julian on a “busman’s holiday” trip where the boys made well over a hundred casts at tailers and sleepers that would have nothing to do with the baits.
In those days, Chuck was an inveterate live bait guy and he always bought forty live ones when he personally fished. I just sat there and teased him and the boys. Then I got them to put out two bars with predator chasebaits, we ran them right in front of a pack of five or six sleepers and got a double hookup. And we caught more fish after that. From that day on, Chuck became a “BarHead” and you will find SuperBars on all of his boats and in use every day.
I have included a picture of Chuck and Lalo with a big ‘hoo that was one of seven we caught, along with several marlin and some tunas and dorados on my boat on the day I took Chuck, who is a wahoo nut like me, out to show him what bars do to wahoo. All fish that day, a morning only trip, were bar fish.
I don’t know about where you fish in Mexico, but in Cabo, live mackerel and caballitos usually cost $2 apiece, up to $5 apiece during some full and new moon periods with limited supplies per boat at those times. The average charterboat bought between a dozen and a dozen and a half baits for $24 - $36 a day, bait cost. Some of those baits are usually in bad shape and die. Some get eaten by fish, but one of the most common sights in Cabo is boats approaching the harbor with crew and passengers tossing remaining baits, sometimes a lot of them, to the birds. One thing you can say for sure about a spreaderbar is, you’ll never have to feed even one to the birds.
And, of course, right now you can buy a bar for the same or less money than that one day bait supply costs you and it will last and catch fish forever as long as you don’t lose it. “All that money for a spreaderbar” seems to make more and more sense and may even turn into chump change when you look at it that way.
You can argue tactics, techniques, the fish, or just about anything else with me at any time, but accusing me or hinting that I might twist the truth around to promote something that I make or anyone else does is absolutely bogus.
I’ll wrap up by reminding folks of some facts. I was owner/operator (that second one very rare in Mexico that required special permission) of a popular, high end charterboat that fished an average of more than five days a week, year-round in the fish-rich waters of Cabo San Lucas. Our charter prices, along with Picante’s, were the highest in Cabo for our size vessel and like them, we stayed heavily booked. Flat calm or rough, we caught the heck out of the fish during their feeding periods and, using some of the tips I tried to pass along on this thread, we caught a lot of them during their non-feeding periods and went early or stated late to hit tides at those times too. It paid off for us and it will pay off for others.
As far as the gentleman who noted that king mackerel and wahoo shred bars, I absolutely agree with the king macks chopping bars up, especially the small school fish, like they do everything else but metal and wire. Bluefish can also be murder on plastic lures and mono, but not wahoo. I have caught very large numbers of them on bars and only lost one bar. That was to a small ‘hoo that hit a snap swivel that connected the running line to the bar leader. That swivel had gotten a bit too shiny and should have been changed. I don’t know why, but wahoo consistently target the chasebait, which should be rigged on single strand wire in wahoo country. And here's a tip for anyone who goes for wahoo with bars...the more chewed up and bedraggled the chasebait, the better it gets bit, so don't be in a hurry to change a chopped one!
To the question concerning trimming up or down the boat for trolling bars, my advice is to simply troll at whatever attitude gives you a nice, clean wake for the conditions that you are in and don’t worry about the fish seeing the short bars, they will. And don't be concerned about the boat spooking the fish, because it won't. Try the short lures for a while and see for yourself. A good rule of thumb here is to make those short bars dark ones, which really makes them easy for tight tuna to see.
Sorry if I got my hackles up a little here. I just don’t like it when inaccurate statements are made about my business based on the way that others do things, not us, and suggestions are made that what I teach has a mercenary objective associated with it. I don’t think anyone else would like that either. Both the things that I try to pass along and my products stand on their own two feet and on their own.
Here are some shots of bars running. Note how close to the boat the short ones are.
I have been fishing San Diego, Cabo and mainland Mexico for over 40 years and single lures and live bait are king. That may change, but the tournament guys don't fish and win with spreaders.
I have also used your bars and my fishing buddy, who says he has fished lots with you, specifically calls them Archers $200 spreader bars, and says he has never caught zilch with them, in Cabos, on his boat, and yours.
By your post, it looks like you have had to come down in prices, or maybe he is just exagerating. But with this post your mission has been accomplished again. Free advertising, and now even a price list, for your books and products on a consumer orientated board.
There is no no ill will or sly insinuation on my part- I am saying if you don't sell it, you're not interested in talking about it. Clear? But, good luck in your endevours.
And if you make another 3 line post or one that goes on for 10 pages, you will still have an uphill battle convincing me and any professional fisherman that any lure you promote will put more albacore on the boat than live bait. Read the fish reports for the SD boats- What % of the tuna caught were taken on live bait-90%? More?
But if you want, try trolling a speader bar long on a calm day when the large tuna are boat shy and see how that works.
They may work close during peak feeding times for the schoolies you show in your pictures, but most of use after the biggest one out there, and when its calm, that is more a challenge,
Good tide times last 1-3 hours a day. I like to catch em all day long.
So whether you catch or buy your bait, its the way to go when they have lockjaw, along with trolling long, skipping baits with a kit, and casting skipping surface lures, in my humble opinion.
Well this seems to be a pretty heated debate...for my two cents, as a strictly recreational angler, and one who usually only gets into the weekend warrior mode, I have to take the conditions as I find them, and here in the NE, it ranges from mill pond to ugly...and I try to fish as much of it as I comfortably can. I had a pretty good year offshore, with about 150 hrs or so logged on the engines, and for the most part, I did pretty well in varying conditions...I think I just lucked out and were around when the fish were eating...IMHO. I really dont think the fish give two shits what the seas look like, if they are eating they are eating...and I know it may be counterintuitive, but if I had to do soem thinking about it, I would venture to guess that a calmer sea may make the action of your spread that much more evident, producing a strike, but thats just my novice thinking.... A comment was made above about gauging tides when you are in an offshore area...for myself, I tend to use paper charts to track the direction and velocity of the tides...if you look close you will see "tide compasses" on your charts that look like a clock face with different length arrows...these tell you in 12 hr rotations what direction the "tide" is ( remember that offshore, without the influence of land, the "tide" is a circular pattern that follows the lunar movement) going and at what general velocity....NOAA also has some tide information, but, with their sea forecast skills, you never know
Thanks for the different approaches on feeding and how to raise fish guys, all these comments have been very thorough and interesting to read....
Ryan
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Lets have a Sexy Party! 38 Henriques FB 2000 ~ 17 Montauk 1978
Sometimes when the fish are around but can't get the bite in flat calm - especially if its toward the end of the trip. I'll dump a bunc of small bait (spearing, chunks, butterfish, etc) in the area that I see the fish - then I'l wait about 5 minutes and do it again, but with some baited hooks. then if still nothing I'll try trollwing circles and zig zag patterns over the area - include at least one deep lure.
Ill also try a pattern of straight running lures and skirted hoos and then far back down the middle a slant head lure that will cut side to side with the occaisional "skip" Each rigger will have be in closer than that with a bird in front of the lure. feathers, cedar plugs or spreader bars on flat lines in close.
If my Cabo "buddy" you speak just knew me, let alone "fished lots" with me he would know that my bars do not now, nor have they EVER even remotely approached $200. And, if he really did fish "lots" with me, no matter who he was or when we fished, we caught a lot of fish on bars AND ballyhoo, both of which we introduced down there. Also, if this guy knew me so well and fished with me so much, you should have no problem and neither should he saying who he is.
You say that you have fished my bars? What models? Where and how did you get them? Up until recently the only place anybody could get SuperBars was directly from us, period. As such, we have records of who bought what since Day One, so I can go back and confirm that you actually tried our bars and not someone else's and maybe mistook them for ours.
Our prices have always been the best we can offer and, in fact, they have gotten higher over the past couple of years due to increasing raw material costs, so you are wrong there.
I don't know how you can say that crap about "now even a price list." I did not post a price list, I simply broke down the price ranges of our entire lineup of 238 bars in response to your (and it turns out your buddy who knows me so well's) ridiculous and innaccurate $200 claim. No sizes, models, or whatever were listed there, like they would be in a price list. Where do you get off calling what I posted "a price list"?
No one in any business would allow a blatant misreprentation of their prices without responding to it and I did so in a mighty conservative manner compared to how most businessmen would. And instead of apologizing for that blatant misreprentation, now you pin it on some mystery person, which is just as irresponsible as making up that number yourself.
There was zero mention of my "books and products". My response pertained to the subject at hand, bar prices, which YOU brought up, not me, and were vastly innacurate about.
As for "if you don't sell it, you're not interested in talking about it", that's a crock too. A look back at my posts will prove that I spend a lot of time talking about all sorts of stuff that I don't sell, like downriggers, rigging, tackle, handling sharks, Toad teasers and how to make them, charterboat recommendations, and a lot of other subjects. Most of my book mentions consist of identifying some posts as what they are - excerpts from a given book and that's it - no big sales pitch. And information that I can and do sell in books and magazines, given up here for free. Here too, you are wrong.
What the San Diego boats catch albacore on is irrelevant to this discussion, which has to do with how private boat fishermen troll lures, no comparison whatsoever. Just for your information, though, some of the fleet is runnng a new kind of bar (oh, no, another plug!) that one of our guys, a sportboat captain himself, has designed for that type of boat. The one picture attached here shows just on result and speaks for itself, I think.
Even your comments about "the schoolies you show in your pictures" flies in the face of the facts. That bigeye was 328#. What's your biggest 'eye? The yellowfin was caught by Dick Gephardt, of Cabo San Lucas and Newport Beach, California and owner of the Cabo charterboat "Yahoo" (no mystery man) and weighed 312#. We caught another one that same week on that same bar that weighed 352#. That fish was caught by Byron Olsen of Chatsworth, California. If those aren't your idea of big fish, well, what can I say? It makes no sense whatsoever to try to have a dialog with someone who calls truly big fish "schoolies" and insists on dishing out innaccurate information and then, faced with the actual facts, continues to quote that same bogus information, only pinning it on some other source.
The final blow is trying to tell me how to fish, of all things, spreaderbars, lures that you yourself have stated that you haven't caught any fish on. Why in the world would I take advice like that? In spite of likely having fished spreaderbars longer and more often than anyone that I know of, I will gladly listen to another bar fisherman and try anything that he tells me about that I haven't tried, but from someone who can't catch fish on bars? No thanks.
When it comes to tournaments, especially marlin tournaments (that again, weren't part of this thread), very few people know what the likes of Lassly, Groesbeck, The Beak and other consistent winners actually fish with. Considering the fact that giving up that kind of information could literally cost them millions of tournament dollars, that stands to reason. I will say this, though, they have all bought our products for a lot of years now.
My health does not allow me to fish tournaments any longer, but the last one that I fished, the Stars and Stripes down in Cabo, my boat swept all three places in the division that my charter, whose last name was Anderson wanted to fish. They actually changed the rules after that so that one boat could only win one place in a division in that tournament. All of the fish were caught on bars. If you doubt any of this, feel free to Google up the tournament history and you can read all about it. To make that easier, the tournament director's email is eldickolives@aol.com and ask him about what I have written here. I don't want anyone thinking that I stretch the truth about this, or anything else. Oh, and when you contact him, be sure to ask him if he has ever fished my bars and what he has caught on them. Come on, please, do it!
Other than whatever I might have to say if my "mystery buddy" who fished so often with me down in Cabo (you have no "buddies" when you operate a charterboat. The only non-charter fishing I ever did down there was with fellow charter captains and crews; everything else was a charter, so it will be easy to check this guy out by checking the logs, even if I don't recognize his name) I have nothing more to say on this thread. I deeply regret that it has turned into what it has and no matter what, I have said what I have to say and am done with it. Hopefully, Bull and I can return to peaceful relations in the future.
Finally, I am in no way knocking bait fishing for anything. I've done tons of it and love it and I know that it is, in and of itself, a special discipline that includes some true masters in its ranks. I am also aware that it will out catch lures of any kind, and that the opposite is true too. Bait fishing tactics would and have made for some great threads in the past and I'm sure that it will again in the future.
Okay, that's it from at least one grumpy old man. You young guys see what can happen to a big game fisherman when he gets old? Sorry about that! No more from me on this from this grouch, except for what I will have to say when I find out who my "Cabo mystery buddy" is...if I do.
Calm seas trolling suggestions 
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