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I stole this post from another board quite awhile back. Its been posted several places so maybe you've seen it but its the best I've seen. It was written by Capt. Fred Archer.
Okay, okay, I can't stand it anymore! I'm joining in on this one with my usual polite approach. I hope it is reciprocated.
HooseMan, if you want to catch Cally bigeye, NOW is the time to start. The SayMan lives in bigeye country and as I did when I "pin hooked" 'em commercially back there, YOU HAVE TO FISH FOR BIGEYE OR YOU AIN'T CATCHIN' ANY! And Cally and even many east coast guys don't know their butts from baked potatoes when it comes to the bigeyes and many lack the simple starch it takes to fish for them. And I remind you, if you don't target them you are going to wind up thinking that there aren't any around (sound familiar?)
They, not swordfish, were and are the primary target of the longliners that flocked here because of their great value, which is much higher than sword meat on the sushi market. There are actually a lot more of them here than fishermen realize. If a few start fishing them the right way, they will catch them.
I should add here that bigeye are like all other fish, in that they act the same all over the world. D-D-Dustin's (only hard to say the first time in a while, I hope) comments on how they are fished in Madeira pretty much match SayMan's and to a certain extent, Bob's, and what I know of them, as well.
Want to catch local bigeye? Okay. BUT YA GOTTA DO IT RIGHT! Here goes...
Do exactly what the SayMan said - first, find the albacore. Bigeye are usually under them - often a thousand feet or even more under them during daylight hours. So while the sun shines, have a ball, catch albacore.
Then find the good break that the albies are usually on, the major body that is. Fish the albies on the warm side and the eyes on the cold one. Stay with the break, no matter what.
Forget about bigeye during the day, at least for the most part. Or, if you'd like to have a shot at the occasional (rare, rare, rare) daytime fish, run two big, short, fat jets tight and forget about them. DO NOT think that there aren't any around if you don't get bit on these during daylight hours!
Now here is the almost impossible part for Cally fishermen. Absolutely forget about the albies in the early morning and late evening periods, ESPECIALLY the ones with prime tide changes taking place. This prime time for bigeye runs from a couple of hours before light to a couple of hours aftet, to a couple before dark to a couple of hours after. This is when they bite, and just about the ONLY time they bite. Albies bite great in the daytime, bigeye do not, sooo...
Your target is now bigeye AND ALBACORE HAVE BECOME VERMIN that you and your crew MUST IGNORE if you want to be successful at catching eyes. This means that clown who tries to sneak a little, bitty 30# outfit into the spread needs to have the riot act read to him and kept from polluting the spread with popguns.
MY tackle would be all bent butt eighties with eighty or one thirty and BIG leaders on them. NO little chicken - Sorry, I will learn to watch my language -e rigs, no matter what kind of topshots and other foolishness those who don't have the faintest idea what they are doing will try to pollute the spread with. ("Pollution" meaning that Murphy's Law says that their puny little rig will get belted first and you and the clown fishing it will find out what a two hundred pound class eye or bluefin can do to pityful little gear in deep water. And that the rest of the bigeye pod goes away with the hooked sprinter. It ain't a purty sight!)
I would not run any more than four armed lures and I would run them all short, two pinned down on Roller Trollers and two with Roller Trollers hooked to the safety line loops below the reels. Either that or I'd have some of Captain Bob's Melville's (what I call) Upriggers in the holders with eighty stand up rods in the lower and upper positions. (Neat!)
My lures would be big, heavy black or black and purple or black and whatever jets with the skirts cut down so that they're only about nine inches long. If I had problems with trash fish (albies), I'd use the same jets, but with uncut skirts so they'd be about twelve or fourteen inches long. If the Humbolts are around I'd run two shorties tightest and two BIG Tred Barta type jets or swimming lures (the big Petrolero if it were up to me) close behind and "chasing" them (PERFECT for Bob's upriggers!).
I'll keep this as short and sweet as I can. Keep the Rapalas out of the water when you are after bigeye. First, they're not that good a bigeye lure in the first place. Second, hooks and split rings and such will fail when you get a major bigeye on the leader. Third, if you still insist on using them, replace the trebles or doubles with big, single 7699 (I think these are the kirbed ones?) Mustads (about the same weight as the trebles or doubles, which lets you use BIG singles). You'll have to bend the hook hanger loops so that you can mount new, heavier split rings on them and so that the belly hook runs DOWN and the tail hook runs UP. The right configuration is a bigger hook on the belly, say an 11/0 and a smaller one on the tail, say a 10/0.
You use the kirbed hooks because when you mount them this way, the kirbs oppose each other and actually help the lure run tighter and better. If you get unlucky(?) a bigeye will gobble the plug down and get hooked in the top and bottom of the mouth. This equals a five minute bigeye, as long as you have the gear to crank them back up with.
Trolling speed would be six-to-eight knots, unless I was running at the right time and around a good tide change but not yet on the "primo" water, in which case I'd run two of the heavy shorties and would slow down to whatever speed it took to keep them in the water. (Nobody in their right mind should be running fast at night anyway.) Someone must watch the rods in this case - big, deep water bigeye can empty an eighty way fast!
Drags set at strike, 1/3 of rated line strength. BIG, meaty hooks that go in and stay in (7731 is good) or, the ones I would run nowadays, BIG circles. We used to pull a hook on a bigeye once in a while ($2,000 mistake!) and that just ain't gonna happen with circles.
Another thing that I would do nowadays is run a least a couple of
SuperBars with no hooks on them short, right over and maybe a little in front of the jets. You must put any wide-eyed alby whackos to bed when you do this, because the purpose is to raise and drive schools of albacore nuts with the "uncatchable" bars so that they, in turn, will act as living teasers for bigeyes. This scene will make a newbie nuts and he will just have to mess with your "teasers" and you don't want that. Lock the drags down on the outfits with the bars on them, or big albies and for sure bigeyes will drag them off a ways and futs up the charge to the jets by the bigeye pod.
Do not stop, turn, or slide the boat when you get bit! If you aren't covered right away, you will be in a few more seconds, as long as you don't change what raised the fish in the first place. Just keep on chuggin' until you are covered, or the screamers in the 'pit are sure you are about to get spooled (only listen to the one that knows what he's talking about here - the "girls" will be convinced that you are getting spooled right from the get-go. Ignore 'em.)
If you have more fish hooked than you do anglers, never stop the boat while you fight and land the fish, one or two at time. Just keep her going forward at a slow idle leaving the extra rigs in the holders until someone gets freed up and can take one. Stay calm and steady and you should land all quads if you do it this way.
AND NO TOSSING CHUM! At least not until you've landed a couple of quads and want to try dicking around with tigers with slingshots. Until then, nobody throws chum OR HOOK BAITS, because it will break up the lure charge you have going and besides, you KNOW some yo-yo is going to put a bait out there with ballet slipper gear attached to it, with the inevitable results.
That simple, yet that hard for Cally guys. It's amazing! Many have the stones and WILL run at night to get out to the albacore/bigeye grounds, but they then consistently squander bigeye prime (and just about only) bite time sitting and waiting for the sun to come up, maybe drowning a minnow or two that a bigeye isn't much interested in in the first place while they await that "Magical" grey light for albies. They might even troll around a little, but with the albie lures that bigeyes basically could care less about on little girls' dollhouse tackle. Little do they know how CLOSE they are to bigeye heaven!
While many Cally guys could and should be taking a shot at morning bigeye, the late bite is almost universally ignored, with nearly all of those often awesome bites taking place while boats are headed for the beach, or worse yet, to a mooring on Catalina or an anchor spot at San Clemente, where some crew actually fritter away prime bigeye time catching swell sharks, bat rays, spider crabs, mackerel and who knows what other kinds of junk fish.
There are still lots of bigeye in local waters throughout much of the spring, summer and fall. But as insisted here by me and confirmed here by others who actually catch the durned things, you have to fish them right, or as that TredMonster would say, "forgeddaboudit, fockhead!"
Anybody with hair on their chest willing to do it right and rack up some bigeye? No? Well, have a nice quiche tonight there at the anchorage or the dock or the moorings and and I hope the wine is a nice one and don't let the bedbugs bite! But do me favor, will ya? Stop whining about not catching these unique and special fish when you ain't doin' it right, okay?
Cally fishermen with good memories might recall a guy saying much the same about thresher sharks back in the days when the traditional wisdom was that they too were "few and far between". If you do remember, then you know what happened, often the first day people did it right, after that guy wrote a book about what it takes to catch the longtails. Well, he ain't writing a book about it this time (although bigeye are covered in depth in a separate chapter of his new spreader bar book), but it is exactly the same situation - believe, do and you will start getting your string stretched by these other bad boys that are stacked up out there, just waiting for you to do it right so they can show you their stuff!
Them battlewagon guys should be the leaders in this, but I don't think that they will be. I think it'll be the hardcore, small private boat guys that will lead the way. And here's a prediction - they are going to have a problem figuring out where to put those big tanks when they start catching them! If it were me, I'd just get on the horn and ask one of those battlewagon guys if he would haul my eyes back for me.
I never trolled one. We always caught them going into the dark on deep chunks. Those tight solid red balls with no fuzy stuff around them on the sounder that are way deep thats them. I like the above story kinda reads like a Capt Sane says in National Fisherman, think I'll try some of it someday.
I got to tell you, that your reply has definetly got my attention! I would like to aSk you a few more questions please.
One, just for kicks not that it matters much, what area of our fine nation do you and the author fish?
As far as the spreader bars the author is talking about, what are they? Please describe them in detail if you would?
Does big black and green work as far as Jetheads are concerned?
I have been trying to catch EYES with consistency as long as I have been chasing albacore( known as longfin in my parts) and yellowfin.
I tuna fish in the northeast canyons primarily and will also be tuna fishing off Oregon inlet NC as well as Hatteras inlet NC.
Tuna fishing for Albies and yellowfin has become second nature for me. But on the other hand BIGEYES have been eluding my hooks for years. Trying to master this tuna fishery has definetly been frustrating so I appreciate the info already given and any you might still have to offer. And this goes for any other great BIGEYE slayer out there!
In our waters of the eastern Atlantic bigeye are the main big tuna. The Canary Islands see some yellowfin in summer but in the Azores and Madeira, almost all the big tuna catch is bigeye. "Patudo" my e-name is a Portuguese term for bigeye. Early season fish tend to be smaller and get bigger as spring goes into summer. From about June onwards in Madeiran waters they are few and can be extremely difficult to tempt, but can average a very good size. The largest fish I've seen on the dock was 120kgs (about 250 pounds) and they would average around 80kgs (160-170 pounds) but last year the skipper I fish with boated a 302 pounder while marlin fishing in August, that's one hell of a fish! Traditionally Easter time is a good time to fish bigeye in Madeira with smaller fish in the 40 to about 70 lb class but fast action. However last May there were a lot of nice ones on the grounds, big fish in the 150 to 200 lbs class. They were close to shore too so everything floating went out after them, folks dragging rapalas from sailboats, kayaks etc. Madeiran fishermen love tuna fishing so it can become a bit of a zoo if the fish are in close and lots of them.
In our area tuna fishing is done by trolling lures while looking out for signs such as tuna busting, bait, birds and working commercial boats and feeding dolphins. The main commercial method in Madeiran waters is pole and line and the commercials tend to be excellent fishermen so finding some commercial boats either working or actually stopped fishing is a great sign. Tuna can be found from close to shore to a long way offshore depending on bait and the movements of the schools. Quite often there is good action in the deep water right outside Funchal harbour. If you're targeting tuna it's best to put in a long fishing day, dawn and dusk are normally good times but I've seen them busting in broad daylight. I think if there's bait around they will come up and hit it at any time. The seasons there is a lot of bait close to the island the fish tend to hold on the grounds better and bust longer at the surface making them easier to find and catch. Seasons where there is little bait the fish tend to breeze past the island very quickly, bust very quickly, and fishing isn't as consistent.
The actual fishing is relatively simple with most fishermen using 80 and 130 pound tackle which overguns the smaller fish but most locals are fishing for numbers - worked hard and fast it's not unusual to catch a dozen or more fish when the bite is hot. The best single day score I can remember was by a local private boat who took 50+ fish all on the troll. Different fishermen prefer different lures and leader arrangements and most of them seem to do fairly well. I would say the most important key to success is having good intelligence on where the fish are. I prefer to fish seven rods with two flat lines on the 3rd wave, two short riggers on the 4th and two long riggers on the 5th with a bridge rod on the 5th to 6th wave with two daisy chain squid teasers on the 2nd wave. I like smaller lures, like jets, with 6 1/2" and 7 3/4" skirts but will normally run one or two 10 inch lures on heavier gear. Not just for tuna- once May rolls around, blue marlin start to show up and I've had bites from blues in the 700+ class on 10-inch lures. I don't think colour is that important (although I like blues and pinks), and they seem to be fairly dumb about leader size most of the time so I prefer 300 pound leader. Most of the big fish in summer are caught while trolling for blue marlin. 8 to 10 inch lures run far back in clean blue water from the long outrigger or center rigger seem to get the first bite, then often one or two additional fish crash the other baits. Most Madeiran fishermen would rather catch one or two fat bigeyes rather than a blue marlin.
I just happened to run across a picture of that super bar and I'll get you the link for pics as well as a couple of other things asap. Remember, I didn't write that, I just thought its an awesome post with very valuable info. Gets the blood going.
Let me try that again. In regards to your above post. I fish the Northcoast of Ca. for Albacore, never caught a Bigeye. I ran across Archers post on a Southern Ca. board. They were talking about trying to catch Bigeye down there and thats whats its in reference to. They was a lot of discussion about the Madieria(?) area like Patudo posted. There is a picture of the super bar posted on fullspeedfishing.com (a nor-cal board) go to fishing techniques and members tips then on top there is a post from Vulpinus about spreader bars or upriggers (I can't remember which).
My take on tuna lure selection, in our waters is that the same lures are normally good for both albacore and bigeye. They probably eat the same feed and if both species are around (not always as albacore can show up any time of year and normally rather unpredictable) they can often be caught together. Bigeye are bigger and have a wicked mouthful of teeth though, so the heavier leader you can get away with the better. BET will at times eat very small lures, I know of a 173 pound fish caught on a mini mold craft chugger and fish of 130+ lbs hooked up on small lures to catch skipjack and peanut dorado. They will also eat pretty big lures, especially the big ones, so nothing is set in stone. As mentioned before I like to pull a variety of sizes, and let the fish tell me what they want. I definitely agree dawn and dusk is good, but then that seems true of all tuna. I've also seen bigeyes busting on top in broad daylight, 150 to 200 pound fish crashing on mackerel all round the boat like dolphins. (unfortunately on that occasion we had big marlin lures out and the fish just didn't want to know). I've never fished your area but maybe your biggest problem in catching bigeye is that the other tuna are simply more numerous and beat the bigeyes to your baits.
We don't have access to accurate ocean surface temperature info and if we did that would probably make a big difference in finding the fish.
eye balls eye balls eye balls
nothing like the wlf pack coming up and taking every line you have out running hard and stong untill the line is almost dumped.
the feeling of the troling boat suddenly coming to a abrupt halt. this is what makes the run to the canyons here in the northeast worth it
the wolf pack has not happened to me in about 5 years now. BUT that single lone wolf has and man where the some brutes 268 last year on the first trip to the canyon hooked up at 1pm
the year before she went 286 both caugh on the same lure
and both caught right in the same area
i would say you find the bait you find the fish
if i can figure out how to post the pics i would!
I'm not a battlewagon guy, one of the smaller sportfisher's of the California Bight. The one spread that has produced for me is four spreader bars, all have 14 baits behind them, and they're 8.5 inches long. Even in the dark, I'm pulling 2, black/purple,1 Red, (calamari) 1 Green/black In between the bars with a mix of chase bait colors. In between the spreader bars I'm pulling larger daisy chains with large chase bait. I pull two of the bars out of the outriggers, two cliped down on roller trollers in the corners, and one lagre slant face green and yellow that really mixes up the water right in between those bars. While many stop pulling for the big eye after the sun comes up - don't. The largest big eye tuna taken on our Black and Purple 8.5/10 bar was a 188# in late Sept. last year. That bad boy was taken at 11:30AM - Black/purple, it was a money winner. A few of the other sucessfull big eye hunters pull Mauraders in B/P under their bars....Larger sizes are preferred here. I agree with keeping the Rapals out of the spread.
One other thing I'll attach to the bars while in the dark right under my bars last skirt is the ball bearing swivels, this is where the chase bait is attached. I also attach a lite stick Pull 'em on stand up 80s, 5 to 7.5 knotts, if I mark it I'll keep moving over it, back and forth - keep the tempation over them as long as you can. Don't be afraid to slow down. When you mark them...hit the plotter to save the spot..mark'em again...hit the plotter, if your not hooked up, swing back around and when you mark em' hit the plotter again. You'll establish a direction of travel.
__________________ Capt. Mike Fisher
Stock Reduction Sale Ongoing
Totally agree on not giving up when the sun is up. I've seen big fish rolling on the surface in broad daylight and busting on bait.. If there is bait up there they will destroy it no matter how bright the sun.
A lot of the really big fish in summer seem to come on a medium or smallish lure fished in clean water way back off a long rigger or center rigger. One theory I've heard is they cruise deep and take a long time to come up behind the boat, so the long lure back there gets it. The biggest one last year (302#) came on a super plunger.
I was on a trip chunking for yellow fins one night. We had a real good flurry just after sunset. We continued to pick up a few fish here and there throughout the night. Just before dawn the action suddenly died off. While they were deciding what to do with the new day, I kept chunking. I got a hit and hooked up. The fish dove and literately smoked the Penn 50. I tried everything I knew to save the line and the fish, but he took all the line and snapped it at the spool. By this time, one of the other guys saw what was going on and brought out a 130 . Got hooked up again, and after a good fight, we brought in a 190lb. Bigeye. Of course I wanted to keep chunking, but the capitan said "we got enough tuna," "lets troll for Marlin. It was a long time before I forgave him. I just remembered, during the night, one of the other guys had a yellow fin on. He asked me to gaff it when he got it in. He said that it suddenly jerked and now there wasn't any pull on the line. He brought in the line and the hook only had a tuna head on it. I guess he slowed the tuna down enough for a shark to snatch it.
__________________ "I refuse to belong to any club that would have me as a member"
BIG EYE TUNA SPREAD! 
I also attach a lite stick 
