Marlin Lure spread, short handed

[Midnight]

Gday,
I'm after opinions and experience with lure fishing for Marlin when crew numbers are limited. i.e only 2 or 3 onboard.

I ran a spread of 3 lures the other day out wide due to only having one other adult on board, and 2 young fellas.

I ran a short corner, short rigger and long rigger. I kept it to 3 lures so that there was less gear to clear and get after it if we got a nice one.
If it was just the missus and I, I have thought that I would run maybe only 2 lures. But which 2? I figure short corner and short rigger??

What do you folks out there run in the same scenario.

Any tips greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Myles

[finding_time]

Myles

Mate when i'm short handed in the cat and dont have Gar we run 3, a short corner a long corner and a shot gun run at the long rigger lenght. Our short corner is set back abit further because of the cat's wash but is still only 7m from the boat then i step the others back from there! If i was to run 2 it would be a purple and black cockroach run at slightly longer short corner and a lumo zipper at a slightly longer long corner! If i had some gar i would run one swim and one skip before i thought about putting lures in although my pitbull "hotdog" in fluro went real well on the long rigger last season and would be real hard to leave in the rod holder

Ian

[Smithy]

I run two only heavy tackle and both of them are out of my outriggers. I only have 2x37kg outfits so that is all I run. 24kg is a waste of time on our heavy tackle grounds and all you do is kill blues if you use it. I want to get them tagged in good healthy condition or don't want to pop them off due to drag pressure so they then trail around a couple of hundred metres of 24kg. You don't have to fish full 13kg of strike drag or 18kg of sunset drag on 37kg if you can't handle it, the 37kg is to avoid pop-offs due to water pressure when blues go on those big figure 8 jumping runs and there is a hinge point or pressure point on your line at every change of direction.

Light tackle the old adage used to be only one more outfit than the number of people aboard though I remember a few quadruple hookups in my 15'er on tuna with two aboard. Last season during the wahoo and tuna bite at Hutchies I just ran 2xskirts out of my riggers and 1 or 2 minnows down the guts. My best day locally on the Mooloolaba grounds was 6 blacks tagged and most of that day was just 2xskirts out of the riggers. There wasn't much time between bites to do much anyway and then we were able to clear and get on the fish so much faster. I didn't run teasers last year either as I had lost my mirror type teaser a couple of years ago to a fish trap float at Port Stephens and hadn't replaced it yet. I have another one now so will pretty much run it all the time but only on sunny days.

I am a fan of lumanscent green at long rigger both heavy tackle and light. Light tackle on my short rigger I was running blue/silver. Heavy tackle I run a small blue/silver lure if flying fish are around or something bigger and black if the frigate tuna are around.

[Midnight]

Thanks fellas,

All good stuff.

Smithy, any reason for not running a short corner? Have you had better success with just the long and short rigger? Or do you run them the same length?

I get your point Smithy re the 80lb vs 50lb, but I only have 3 proper 50lb reels. A Tiagra 50w and 2 TLD50lrsa. I guess I could fish 80lb on them but they would still be on 50lb rods. Also I use them in close as well for my normal wahoo and dolphinfish/tuna trolling as I only have 2 light tackle outfits, and catchin an 8kg wahoo or mahi mahi on 80lb doesn't excite me hahaha

If I can catch a 500lb Blue on 50lb and get a 10-1 it would be an abslolute fishing career milestone for me!
But I feel for the most part with the 200-300lb fish most commonly encountered that fishing the 50 will be sufficient. Again, I am absolutely not discounting your advice, and always appreciate your experience in this field.
At the moment I just cant afford (read, justify to the minister for war and finance) to go out and buy another couple of 80lb outfits.

Thanks again for the tips and advice Ian and Smithy as I have plenty to learn,

Cheers,
Myles

[Smithy]

When HT I don't run a SC or a LC cause I only have 2x80s. I have 80lb line on Tiagra 50W LRSs. Just comes down the whole outboard or sterndrive thing where we put out a much dirtier wake than a diesel shaft drive so run them longer. I still run my gear staggered. For HT it is either my Lumo Sprocket at SR and then a Blue Angel Phantom in a psuedo LR/SG sorta position or the Lumo at LR and something like a black/purple/silver Moldcraft Wide Range or a Red Bailey Special Mold Craft Bobby Brown at SR.

I'd still load up 50s with 80lb. I have seen too many blues killed on 50lb due to long fights. Everyone goes out with the best intentions, even myself, but plenty still burn themselves out and sink to the bottom on 80lb fished at 12kg of strike drag let alone 8kg of drag. 80 you can winch them off the bottom if they do metre by metre on low ratio. Can't do it on 50. Hate to say I told you so but certainly go out and give it a go yourself but on 50 you are going to have to clear quick, i.e. run less gear to clear quick and go to sunset drag as quick as everything settles down and fight aggressively with the boat.

Remember the boat raises the fish, you just need to give it something to eat. Switch baiting boats commonly only run 2xlures to make the pitch easier and get straight onto the fish.

[finding_time]

Myles

Just to back up Rob, the blue marlin that i've seen come up dead have all been on 50's, i reckon with the lighter drag the fish can head directally away and down from the boat easier and the potential for tail wrapping is much higher! When i got my heavy tackle reels i went for 80's for this reason, it's a terrible feeling to kill a blue. Also the blues that i've seen caught on 50 have hit the lure and crash dived straight away only to be seen at tag time, the ones on eighty have stayed up, gone nuts , been greener at tag time, so have gone nuts again, much more fun imho!

By all means get your 10 to 1 but chase the 800lb blue instead, there definately out there

Ian

[trymyluck]

Hi
I cannot give any advice on this subject as my experiance is almost zero with blue's. We happened to have a blue take a halco laser pro up at 1770 a few weeks ago and when it did the tail walk my first thought was this is going to kill me getting this bugger in. But in the end it decided to help me out and ran straight at the boat so after a couple of runs around the boat we had it there although it still had plenty in the tank.
As neither of us had ever landed a marlin before the decision was made to release it in the water so that we did not inadvertly injure it or it injure us. Maybe some of the more experianced guys here can give some advise on how to safely handle one of these brutes as it would have been nice to get a pic of it up close and personal but not at its expence.

Mark

[chop duster]

how big was it?

[jeffo]

Mark, how far off 1770?

[trymyluck]

how big was it?

It wasn't overly big, we estimated at around 2m,


marlin1.jpgAttachment 52687

[trymyluck]

Mark, how far off 1770?

I'm not sure on actual position but i'd say about 3 to 4 nm out. We were heading back in when we picked him up on the halco and we also got a nice spanish about 300m off the headland on a skirt. We would have expected it to be the other way round but thats fishing. There is a bit of video footage in the 1770 report featuring some of my "some mothers do have em" gaff-manship. Although in my defence the gaff was a virgin.
Mark

[business class]

I think that you might find the marlin you got was a black not a blue. But well done anyway

[trymyluck]

I think that you might find the marlin you got was a black not a blue. But well done anyway

Goes to show how much I know about marlin.

I did hear that another boat got one as well up there and getting it into the boat they damaged its bill , sort of glad we did not try to get ours on board.

[Midnight]

Gday,

Trymyluck, nice one mate, a bit of fun eh?

Thanks Rob and Ian, that all makes sense.

I was thinking of only running 2 lures when trolling out wide, and as you say Smithy any switch baiting I have seen has been done only pulling two lures as teasers, 1 short corner and one off the rigger.

With my Berty with the single diesel in it I do get a nice clear window in the wake in the short and long corner spots.
Not so with the outboard eh Rob?
What speed to you troll at?

Cheers again for the advice fellas.
Lets hope we see a few this season!

They have been onto the fish out of Cairns this week, making me jealous hahaaha

Catch ya,
Myles

[jeffo]

Thought that may have been the case Mark- Your fish is a Black. Black marlin are actually silver and blue (although when they are tired they will bronze up), Blue marlin can be silver and blue, brown, bronze.....all pretty confusing really