So I have spent this offseason adding some new spreader bars to the arsenal. So now I was thinking of what to do with the old/cheap ones I have. I run a 7rod spread on the boat so I was thinking of running the old bars without the stinger off of the transom cleats behind the flatlines in the spread. Does anybody do this? If so what do you use to secure the bar to the cleat? I would think that if you use mono, even with the stretch in it if a tuna hit the bar the mono may break. Thin nylon rope?
Spreaders as Teasers
1 - 11 of 11 Posts
Joined
·
67,033 Posts
goodeats wrote:
So I have spent this offseason adding some new spreader bars to the arsenal. So now I was thinking of what to do with the old/cheap ones I have. I run a 7rod spread on the boat so I was thinking of running the old bars without the stinger off of the transom cleats behind the flatlines in the spread. Does anybody do this? If so what do you use to secure the bar to the cleat? I would think that if you use mono, even with the stretch in it if a tuna hit the bar the mono may break. Thin nylon rope?
I would run the bars in front of the flatlines on 400 or 500 pound mono.
So I have spent this offseason adding some new spreader bars to the arsenal. So now I was thinking of what to do with the old/cheap ones I have. I run a 7rod spread on the boat so I was thinking of running the old bars without the stinger off of the transom cleats behind the flatlines in the spread. Does anybody do this? If so what do you use to secure the bar to the cleat? I would think that if you use mono, even with the stretch in it if a tuna hit the bar the mono may break. Thin nylon rope?
I would run the bars in front of the flatlines on 400 or 500 pound mono.
Joined
·
286 Posts
We occasionally run 2 big splash bar teasers in the flats with big 14 inch shell squids and 3 big Boone birds each. I tie them to the cleat about 25 feet behind the boat with 500 pound mono. I don't know if they help the bite at all but they look very nice in the spread and throw up alot of water.
I would mount to small reels somewhere on the bridge or somewhere near you riggers and run them thru a glass eye you can tie on the rigger! that is the best bet! run them as teasers and put the briad murauders underneath them! watch out as wahoo have been known to blast out of the water and into the boat after these lures!
Joined
·
142 Posts
If you choose to run teasers of any kind, make sure you have dedicated hands for getting them out of the water quickly and cleanly when the assault from below happens. Otherwise you will have a mess on your hands.
Spreader bars work exceptionally well as teasers. So much so that all of mine have hooks in them...
Spreader bars work exceptionally well as teasers. So much so that all of mine have hooks in them...
I hear ya fweddy, and thanks everybody for the input. Unfortunately I only run a 7 rod spread so putting hooks in all of them is not practical. It seems the best way is to tie the spreader onto real heavy mono to the cleat. I can't wait. Maybe we'll have an early season this year with the looks of the sst's.... Cross my fingers.
hey goodeats...
Before you start running bar off of cleats think of the entire bar being out of the water.
they can not run good off a cleat as the bar will be to close ot the water and run in the water 99% of the time.. you need to keep them up higher and that is why i recommend running them from glass eyes or some sort of eye on your riggers... This way you can set them up with reels or hand lines and pull them right in.. you also do not need to run them with anything more than 80lb mono if you feel to need to go higher it is not really necessary.. I would assume you were running them off of stern cleats and they would be hitting the wake depending on trolling speed!
Think of a way to get the line high so those expensive bars are not in the water and only the trailing lures!!
Before you start running bar off of cleats think of the entire bar being out of the water.
they can not run good off a cleat as the bar will be to close ot the water and run in the water 99% of the time.. you need to keep them up higher and that is why i recommend running them from glass eyes or some sort of eye on your riggers... This way you can set them up with reels or hand lines and pull them right in.. you also do not need to run them with anything more than 80lb mono if you feel to need to go higher it is not really necessary.. I would assume you were running them off of stern cleats and they would be hitting the wake depending on trolling speed!
Think of a way to get the line high so those expensive bars are not in the water and only the trailing lures!!
Joined
·
142 Posts
goodeats,
I run spreader bars all the time VERY close to the boat, usually off the 1st wave on bent butts. The line angle is very low yet the bars remain out of the water. These bars are running on waves 1, 2, and 3 with a bridge teaser between 1 & 2...
![]()
other side...and in sloppy seas, mind you.
![]()
Notice how the bars are NOT in the water!
Properly rigged bars run in the correct positions from the right angles will catch fish like there is no tomorrow. The Superbar's composite material has much to do with how well they run, IMHO.
7 rods is PLENTY to catch all the tuna you could ever want. I only mess with teasers when the bite is REAL slow. Then the "kitchen sink method" gets employed. That particular day we got three very nice bluefin that "just weren't biting", according to the VHF.
I run spreader bars all the time VERY close to the boat, usually off the 1st wave on bent butts. The line angle is very low yet the bars remain out of the water. These bars are running on waves 1, 2, and 3 with a bridge teaser between 1 & 2...
other side...and in sloppy seas, mind you.
Notice how the bars are NOT in the water!
Properly rigged bars run in the correct positions from the right angles will catch fish like there is no tomorrow. The Superbar's composite material has much to do with how well they run, IMHO.
7 rods is PLENTY to catch all the tuna you could ever want. I only mess with teasers when the bite is REAL slow. Then the "kitchen sink method" gets employed. That particular day we got three very nice bluefin that "just weren't biting", according to the VHF.
Joined
·
4,148 Posts
I don't see the point of running a bait that you are going to need to clear, which could potentially get hit, that is run hookless without a rod attached.. I've watched bluefin hit the teasers on a squid bar, they don't do that forever before they give up on the spread completely.
A teaser that simulates a gamefish closing in on the baits, which is intended to incite a bite, is another thing as that shouldn't ever get hit and it might add some special incentive.
What limits the number of lines we can troll is not the gear but rather it's the amount of lines we can clear in a timely manner.. with two people practically it's 4 lines.. with 3 practically it's 6.. maybe 4 anglers that are organized could deal with 8-10... to a lesser extent the manuverability of the boat without causing tangles also limits us depending on the nature of the situation.
In regard to the bars being completely out of the water, I think it's over-rated. When we run our bars we do only run them out as far as we can while keeping them planed, however we've caught pleanty of fish when 50% of the time the bars were getting dragged through sharp wind waves.. this is bluefin I'm speaking of and I have heard yellowfin are completely different.
Jon
A teaser that simulates a gamefish closing in on the baits, which is intended to incite a bite, is another thing as that shouldn't ever get hit and it might add some special incentive.
What limits the number of lines we can troll is not the gear but rather it's the amount of lines we can clear in a timely manner.. with two people practically it's 4 lines.. with 3 practically it's 6.. maybe 4 anglers that are organized could deal with 8-10... to a lesser extent the manuverability of the boat without causing tangles also limits us depending on the nature of the situation.
In regard to the bars being completely out of the water, I think it's over-rated. When we run our bars we do only run them out as far as we can while keeping them planed, however we've caught pleanty of fish when 50% of the time the bars were getting dragged through sharp wind waves.. this is bluefin I'm speaking of and I have heard yellowfin are completely different.
Jon
Ah, Fweddy, them are some pretty SuperBars you're running. Those who use them know that the "rules of running" are far, far different than for traditional bars. I won't take up anybody's time explaining the technical reasons for them running out of the water and so on. It's all explained and pictured in our e-catalog. The new, 2008 one is just out and to get it, all you have to do is email me at [email protected]
As far as running bars as teasers, I do it a great deal of the time using MarlinBars or Spider Dredges. Again, I'll refrain from talking about them here - I don't cotton to what happens if I do that sort of thing.
Here are some illustrations of how we either bait and switch with bars - a way that one other guy and I have won a lot of west coast tuna tournaments using. In fact, my boat took first, second and third in the tuna division of the Stars and Stripes Tournament, which was the one our client wanted to win, against a fleet of other local Cabo charteboats. No brag there, just fact. David Brackmann won the biggest tuna tournament out here, the WON TUNA down in Cabo using the same technique. We have kept this a secret for a long time, but since I can't physically fish tournaments anymore, I'm passing it on to those interested.
The deal is this...once you learn how to bait and switch with bars, which makes them IGFA legal, you will not waste one precious tournament fishing minute catching what are worthless time-wasters at those times, like marlin, mahi's, smaller tunas, even wahoos. Instead, you only bait contending sized tunas. Or, if it's a marlin tournament, you reverse things and you don't bait any other species, especially the worst time-wasters of them all, tunas.
I know all of the "reasons why that won't work here", but as you say that, bear in mind that I have been doing this for way over a decade now and I can tell you a few things that you may not be aware of because you haven't done it yet. Just one has to do with how different gamefish react to the right kind of bar teasers, ones that mimic tightly packed schools of bait with no stragglers, as opposed to a couple of single lures that a pod of tuna raises to, one of them grabs the lure, gets hooked and usually takes off with the rest of the pod going with him. Those who only troll single lures or armed bars tend to think that tuna and marlin are "hit and run" specialists because they are if you are trolling those kinds of lures. A TIGHTLY PACKED SCHOOL OF BAIT IS THE BAITFISH'S FIRST AND PROBABLY ONLY LINE OF DEFENSE. Mimic and that "hit and run" thing changes dramatically.
If you have seen video of marlin and tuna attacking a meatball you will have seen that both make "bluffing runs" at the bait ball to flush singles out that they can target and take. In fact, tunas in some schools get so frustrated over not being able to break the meatball/balls up, individual fish actually jump into the middle of the bait pods in an effort to break them up. Maybe not bigger bluefin, but I have seen this many times with yellowfin and albacore. So, while bluefin might be the exception, which I hope some of you check out, longfins, yellowfin, bigeye and schooly bluefin and billfish stay on bars with no hooks on them far longer than you could possible imagine and you won't know that until you see it for yourself.
Like a lot of other things, I am not going to spend a lot of time on this. I don't remember if it's easy to post pictures here or not. If it is, I'll post a couple of illustrations that among other things, show that this game can be played on small boats with small crews. If you don't see pictures below and you'd like to see some, just email me at [email protected] and I'll fire a couple out to you.
Matter of fact, now that I think about it, there is no sense in me posting something that I have spent a lot of time doing here and getting a bunch of hoots and catcalls over it. So let's just leave it that if you'd like to see how this works, drop me a line and we won't get anybody all fired up. Or at least I hope it won't.
As far as running bars as teasers, I do it a great deal of the time using MarlinBars or Spider Dredges. Again, I'll refrain from talking about them here - I don't cotton to what happens if I do that sort of thing.
Here are some illustrations of how we either bait and switch with bars - a way that one other guy and I have won a lot of west coast tuna tournaments using. In fact, my boat took first, second and third in the tuna division of the Stars and Stripes Tournament, which was the one our client wanted to win, against a fleet of other local Cabo charteboats. No brag there, just fact. David Brackmann won the biggest tuna tournament out here, the WON TUNA down in Cabo using the same technique. We have kept this a secret for a long time, but since I can't physically fish tournaments anymore, I'm passing it on to those interested.
The deal is this...once you learn how to bait and switch with bars, which makes them IGFA legal, you will not waste one precious tournament fishing minute catching what are worthless time-wasters at those times, like marlin, mahi's, smaller tunas, even wahoos. Instead, you only bait contending sized tunas. Or, if it's a marlin tournament, you reverse things and you don't bait any other species, especially the worst time-wasters of them all, tunas.
I know all of the "reasons why that won't work here", but as you say that, bear in mind that I have been doing this for way over a decade now and I can tell you a few things that you may not be aware of because you haven't done it yet. Just one has to do with how different gamefish react to the right kind of bar teasers, ones that mimic tightly packed schools of bait with no stragglers, as opposed to a couple of single lures that a pod of tuna raises to, one of them grabs the lure, gets hooked and usually takes off with the rest of the pod going with him. Those who only troll single lures or armed bars tend to think that tuna and marlin are "hit and run" specialists because they are if you are trolling those kinds of lures. A TIGHTLY PACKED SCHOOL OF BAIT IS THE BAITFISH'S FIRST AND PROBABLY ONLY LINE OF DEFENSE. Mimic and that "hit and run" thing changes dramatically.
If you have seen video of marlin and tuna attacking a meatball you will have seen that both make "bluffing runs" at the bait ball to flush singles out that they can target and take. In fact, tunas in some schools get so frustrated over not being able to break the meatball/balls up, individual fish actually jump into the middle of the bait pods in an effort to break them up. Maybe not bigger bluefin, but I have seen this many times with yellowfin and albacore. So, while bluefin might be the exception, which I hope some of you check out, longfins, yellowfin, bigeye and schooly bluefin and billfish stay on bars with no hooks on them far longer than you could possible imagine and you won't know that until you see it for yourself.
Like a lot of other things, I am not going to spend a lot of time on this. I don't remember if it's easy to post pictures here or not. If it is, I'll post a couple of illustrations that among other things, show that this game can be played on small boats with small crews. If you don't see pictures below and you'd like to see some, just email me at [email protected] and I'll fire a couple out to you.
Matter of fact, now that I think about it, there is no sense in me posting something that I have spent a lot of time doing here and getting a bunch of hoots and catcalls over it. So let's just leave it that if you'd like to see how this works, drop me a line and we won't get anybody all fired up. Or at least I hope it won't.
Joined
·
142 Posts
Great to see you around again, Capt. Fred!
1 - 11 of 11 Posts
