watching the 200lb’ers roll 100y from my boat is driving me crazy! I’m gonna go to 150lb leader next season if they stick around. My friend who landed a 197lber said it inhaled his 200 madmac. Most times up here only one boat catches a single fish for the whole day out of about 10-15 boats. Maybe our bluefin are picky SOB or we’re just all trying to learn and figure it out
I fished them commercially in southern california this year for a few months and caught over 100 fish. Here are my take aways on what works best. We rig the mad macs and halcos on 200lb mono windons on 130lb braid. We had multiple line failures on 100lb but none on the heaver stuff. All lures have a 6/0 treble on the back. I get the boat up to speed (12-13knots) only when I know there are fish in the area. I let one back for 60 seconds and another for 45 seconds. If the short one gets bit I keep going for another 15 seconds to try to get a double. Meter marks of fish 50-200 feet down and breezers seemed to bite better than the foamers on the fast troll. A spreader bar worked better on the foamers or a mackeral cast into the foamer. I also used the spreader bar when searching for the area of fish because I usually search at 8 knots to conserve fuel. Some days they were just flat out hard to get to bite but if I switched it up I could always find something they wanted. That being the said the fast troll mad mac or halco was the top producer by far. Send me private message if you have any other questions.
Man.... Honestly you're wasting fuel and your time if you're not making significant adjustments to your program.
Def huge learning curve and thanks for the encouragement
Im trolling far enough back, at least I have that part down! I've been reading about the spreader bars lately and am interested in trying one. I might build my own this winter as they are pricey! I've read you need a 50 wide reel with heavy line to troll them effectively. Are there small enough bars that I could use my 30 wides?
Hey Luckyfisher7, thanks for the details. As for what you're doing when you're searching, it sounds like a mix. When you're not spotting any fish on the surface, or not marking any down below, what are you doing? Speeding around at 25-30mph looking for signs?
Good question. It really depends. Once I'm out to the general area I want to fish, I stop running for the day. On the rare occasion I'll pick up and run is if I've spent most the day with no sign just to get in a fresh area. The reason I'm not running around looking for life is I spend the entire day glassing with my gyro stabilized binoculars. They literally never leave my face. Its impossible for me to glass at 20 knots. Even while my deckhand is fighting a fish I'm still in the gyros looking for the next school. If you are constantly running then you are potentially missing fish that you might find in the binos. Also if you are running then you obviously don't have your trollers out. If I was fishing for fun and didn't care about how much fuel I burned then I would go everywhere at 12knots with mad macs out. Effective glassing is still possible at that speed most days while you cover more water than you would at normal 8knot trolling. Another tip is to turn on the fish alarm on you depth sounder so you don't need to be staring at all day and can spend more time in your binos looking for fish and birds.
Yes, and yes. I’ve tried dropping them to 300’ and reeling in as quick as I can. I’ve also tried casting into them on the surface, let it flutter for 3-5’, reel like crazy, let it flutter……………. Nothing.
Got it, thanks for that. You're right, it is difficult to use the binos at speed, even the stabilizers. Up north (where we are), for the most part it's been all about birds. Find the life, find the fish. And for the most part, we'd spot them with the naked eye, while running. Having 4 sets of eyes helps!
I've switched over to the RP knot and the Springer for the Madmacs. The only thing I found with the Springer on the Madmacs is it tends to make the lure swim in favor of the side the knot is on. I worry about all knots tied to the Madmacs as they vibrate so dang hard with higher speeds causing friction?? I wonder if some sort of a loop knot would be best to not influence the action of the lures and have less friction?
