Sailfish on string,,,,,,,,

[Quinny69]

I saw a show on pay tv the other day and they were catching sailfish without hooks,,, I kept waiting for the punchline but it really worked.They were fishing Mexico with skirted lures and about 2ft of white loosish twine/string stuff. the sails get the string caught in there bills and aparntlly NEVER come off.They landed a few and just untangled there beak and let them go.The charter operator said he will never go back to hooks (not only cause its better for the fish) as they have never had such a high success rate on the sails.Amazing stuff, anyone done/hear of this? Quinny

[agnes_jack]

Quinny
What a classic!
Makes sense though, They do have a damn rough bill.
Cant say I would have thought of that one though.

Regards, Tony

[basserman]

i also saw the show
yep was good and sure makes you think!

the resone behind the sucesse was because when the sails hit the lure they hit it first with the bill to stun it but when they do the twine starts to get tangled with the bill, then as the sail starts to jump to free itself it only gets caught up more in it insted of throughing the hooks!
if i knew of anyone in a place like broom i would get them to try it for sure!

[bidkev]

I saw a show on pay tv the other day and they were catching sailfish without hooks,,, I kept waiting for the punchline but it really worked.They were fishing Mexico with skirted lures and about 2ft of white loosish twine/string stuff. the sails get the string caught in there bills and aparntlly NEVER come off.They landed a few and just untangled there beak and let them go.The charter operator said he will never go back to hooks (not only cause its better for the fish) as they have never had such a high success rate on the sails.Amazing stuff, anyone done/hear of this? Quinny

It's an old-time method of fishing for eels in some counties in the UK.

A loosely packed ball of wool is dipped in cod-liver oil or similar and left in a stream overnight. I've heard of as many as 6 eels being caught in this manner on one lump of wool.

I tried it once in a little stream at a place called Brock Bottom in Lancashire UK when I was camping with a youth party. I got the kids to collect sheeps wool off the barbed wire fences in the area and we dipped 'em in the tomato sauce from the cans of sardines that we were having for lunch.

We put 6 lines out and hooked on 2 of 'em. One had a small eel on it, and the other had a flounder. The flounder was 15 k's above the salt water mark! Just shows their adaptability to salinity.

kev

[Quinny69]

KEV,,,On a previous episosde (its a pommy fishing show) they had all the EEL fishers from the UK , Started out with the high tec guys whos gear beeped and buzzed when there was an eel around ,to a old guy threading worms onto a loop of wool(this dude held the worms in his gob),he was using that method.Ill give that a miss though... MQ

[bidkev]

KEV,,,On a previous episosde (its a pommy fishing show) they had all the EEL fishers from the UK , Started out with the high tec guys whos gear beeped and buzzed when there was an eel around ,to a old guy threading worms onto a loop of wool(this dude held the worms in his gob),he was using that method.Ill give that a miss though... MQ

Hi Quinney,
What's the programme/channel? Looks like I'm missing something.

The UK coarse (freshwater) anglers who used to fish the weekend competitions (big bucks to be won) used to keep their next maggot hook bait in their mouth so that by the time they rebaited, the maggot had become more active (wriggly and attractive) from the warmth. I believe that someones invented a maggot flask now though.

kev

[Fisherman02]

I believe that someones invented a maggot flask now though

doesn't surpise me!!
cheers jack

[jeffo]

http://www.pakula.com/marlin/showthr...=&threadid=604

have a read through that guys

[Hollywood]

just to catch a billfish on anything will do let alone wool .....