Loonzter - That's correct - we carry up to 10oz Silver Bullets on my boat, but in reality we've never had to go above an 8, and that was on some really bad days. Stick with the 20 or 30lb Powerpro or Tuffline braids and you can hang in there and effectively fish out in the deep despite winds over 20kts. Not too much water resistance to those lines and this will help keep your lures down on the bottom, even in 90' of water. And don't worry about using too large a ball.
Its a trip to see a shorty fluke come up with an 8oz ball in its mouth. These fish appear to have no problem belting those big balls. No matter how big a ball you put on, profile-wise its still WAY smaller than a 6" squid, if you think about it. And actually, the overwhelming majority of the fish on my boat come up on the teaser not the ball anyway.
In truth - this style of fishing in big wind offshore also has alot to do with the type boat you have. My own boat is an inboard with a low-lying cuddy cabin/canvas setup and a fairly deep keel, so the tide not the wind is the determinant as to my drift speed.
My buddy has a Grady 25 and he finds that when the wind is honkin' he has a difficult time keeping his lures/baits on the bottom because he gets wind-driven too fast. A bit too much "Sail" on his Sailfish for this type fishing. Of course this cuts the other way too. On those mid-Summer light-wind days, he moves right along and I sit there pulling skates, so as far as the type of boat, its all a trade-off.
If you follow the links in that first post of mine up there, you will come to a thread in which I gave a good description of the rig we've scienced out for this application and it is just deadly. I would steer clear of any 3-way
setups with 3' leads - too much potential to tangle and twist with those lovely skates that love to spin in nice tight circles on the way up.
Spending more time fishing and less time untagling is my motto. I'm a big believer in the K.I.S.S. principle.
This deep-water stuff is kinda a new style of fishing up here on Long Island, prior to the season before last, I really can't remember seeing too many boats drifting fluke in 80' of water. But if you apply some of the tips from this board, you will find this type fishing **** productive. Last season I don't believe I had a trip without a fish over 5lbs on the boat. Most of our August trips regularly saw limits with quite a few fish over 6 and we had them up to better than 9lbs.
Now of course I would much prefer to catch fluke up in the nice calm shallow bay, but its kinda tough on weekends, what with the jet skiers, the muscle-heads in their muscle boats and the endless parade of weekend boats flying around. Not to mention the endless catch and release of 16.99" shorties.
This is why many serious flukers have been driven to go deep and that fishing has turned out to be pretty darn productive, once we developed tackle and rigs suited to this specialized type of fishing.
rgds, Leprechaun
and Bill W. in the shop can explain the different action of the jig heads, etc.
