Preparing for trolling season

[sporty1]

Hi Guys,
Time for me to organise myself for (hopefully) a good upcoming Mac season. My questions are:
1 What is your favourite Mac lure and colour?
2 Do you attached wire? if so what length? or just heavy mono? What breaking strain?
3 what speed do you troll?
4 What distance do you run the lures behind the boat?
5 Do you use a mono main line or braid?
6 Do you troll lures or bait? if bait how is this done?

[Vitamin Sea]

Hi

No expert but I'll throw in my bit

1. Hardly use lures but when I do laser pro's, 2~3 metre and crazy deep's
2. Single strand brown about 30 odd lb, no more than 300mm
3. 20`to 40'
4. 6.5kts
5. Mono, mainly 15kg, but do run 8 and 10kg
6. Nearly always bait for macks, live always the best, slimys' are number 1, bonito are good to but hard to keep alive, yakkas are ok as well. If not alive I run dead baits on the attached rigs that I was just playing with this arvo.

There are a few gun mack fisho's on here, Skipalong, Little Tuffy, Ros, just to name a couple, they may throw in some ideas for you as well.

Cheers

Bill

[fishfeeder]

Hey VS, can I ask where you get the red and while weighted setup, had a look at BCF and couldn't find any.

Cheers
Brett

[rat_catcher]

1 - I use a mix of Halco Laser Pro's and Rapala X-Raps. If I could only choose one lure it would probably be a Laser Pro in Qantas colours.
2 - Yes single strand brown wire, quite short.
3 - About 6 knots.
4 - Different lengths. Close in of the two back corners and longer off the outriggers.
5 - Always mono for trolling.
6 - Lures. But some of the bait guys swear by dead Ribbonfish (Wolf Herring) trolled extra slow when chasing Spanish Mackeral.

[trueblue]

Hey VS, can I ask where you get the red and while weighted setup, had a look at BCF and couldn't find any.

Cheers
Brett

Barra Jacks at mooloolaba has the red and white chin rigs.............

[trueblue]

wire...... I can't afford to lose too many $20 - $30 lures.......

have lost 6 lures in a single session up off Townsville years ago, and it has been single strand wire ever since for me

[Vitamin Sea]

Hey VS, can I ask where you get the red and while weighted setup, had a look at BCF and couldn't find any.

Cheers
Brett

Got them at Mossops

Cheers

VS

[daveylad]

The bait shop at Mooloolba also sells the chin rigs cheaper than most shops I think its called Chenbien or something its next to the fish and chip restaurant on Parkyn Parade and sells really cheap ice to 11kg for $4

[fishfeeder]

Thanks for the info, I will check out Mossops as they are just around the corner from me !!

Cheers

[Taylor2]

I keep pulling the hooks after a few minutes with the chin rigs. Not really sure why? You guys ever have the same prob..

I get alot of my hits trolling swimming gars with a pink squid over the nose than lures...4 in every 5 go for the gar...only troll pressure points and wheres theres bird action, and only when there is structure down there....have had no success trolling around tuna when the bottom is flat. But when theres structure down there the macs seem to hang about the edges of feedng tuna...

Only troll with wire. Always fish with a floating pilly too...don't use wire for baits...actually get more on pillies than livies too/ 5/0's ganged...only two..they seem to shy away from steel..Anyways I'm not an expert but that seems to consistantly work for me...

[daveylad]

Have a look on You Tube and similar there are some good instructive videos reagrding trolling and chin rigs