Capt. Bill Buckland, Fisherman’s Center
Supplies Needed: L-Bar, 250 lb mono, 11/0 circle hooks, three-way swivel, deep drop gang rig and sash weight.
Dredge Pulling Tricks from the Pros
Photo courtesy Pepper Ailor
By Ric Burnley
The first time I saw a marlin dredge I had two thoughts. First: that looks ridiculous. Second: that looks awesome! At first, 40 rigged mullet dangling from a web-work of bars and leader looks like a cluster FUBAR waiting to happen. Put the dredge in the water, and dozens of swirling and flashing baits look like a school of bait on the run. Fish cannot resist.
Many anglers had the same experience when they first saw a dredge. We caught up with five pros to find out how they use dredges now, and how they plan to use them in the future.
Expert Insight To Blue Marlin Fishing Hook Sets
Photo: Joe Byrum
By Joe Byrum
When it comes to fishing for blue marlin with lures, the hook set can often be an overlooked part of the equation when things are going right and a heavily scrutinized element when they’re not going so well. Typically, when the latter comes into play a fish has just come off or you had a bite that didn’t translate into a hookup. The deliberation gets even heavier when these things occur in multiple instances during a short period of time. The truth is that some marlin aren’t going to be hooked no matter what we do.
Ballyhoo Tackle Tip from the Dominican Republic
While traveling in the Dominican Republic, Eight Eights mate Miguel Santana demonstrated his quick and easy set-up when it comes to rigging his DR ballyhoo.
Tackle Tips: Quick Loader and D.R. Blue Marlin
Eight Eights — D.R. Blue Marlin
Based out of Singer Island, Florida, though rarely at her homeport, the 72-foot Viking Eight Eights is on a constant quest for billfish releases. “Our normal schedule is with the boat 21 days. Then we take 10 off and come back for another 21. Out of the 21 days we’ll probably fish anywhere from 15 to 18 days depending on weather and what’s going on,” says first mate Kyle O’Conner.
In 2020, captains fishing out of Cap Cana reported 91 days where they released five or more blue marlin and 15 days with 10 or more releases. “Last year we got to the Dominican Republic July 1 and in two and a half months we caught 100 blues. We had close to 500 billfish releases and 300 tags for the 2020 season,” O’Conner says.
Man-made FADs highlight this world-class Caribbean fishery, with plastic jugs and styrofoam insulation banded together with scrap seine netting and palm fronds, then strategically tethered to the seafloor in efforts to attract forage and predator fish. Targeted with 30-pound outfits, juvenile blue marlin swarming the warm waters of the D.R. are intelligent and accurate feeders, at times displaying finicky tendencies. Here’s how they are fooled on the Eight Eights:
Rod Blank: BlackFin
Rod Builder: Bill Buckland
Guides: FUJI SiC
Thread Wrap: Green/Orange diamond
Butt: AFTCO #1 unibutt
Reel: Shimano Tyrnos 30
Main Line: Berkley ProSpec 30 lb.
Leader: 100 lb. pink fluorocarbon
Hook: 9/0 circle hook
Bait: Baitmasters medium ballyhoo
Skirt: MoldCraft Junior Hooker
Rigging: EZ Swivel
Ricardo Núñez — Quick Loader
Whether it’s washing the boat or rigging ballyhoo, the best deckhands are fast and efficient in everything they do. Dredge fishing for billfish typically entails naked swimming ballyhoo pulled from the transom corners, but outrigger baits are often outfitted with a small lure head like a MoldCraft Junior Hooker or Squidnation Slammer to create a larger profile and also help ballyhoo track better in rough seas.
When fishing a chugger/ballyhoo combination, the use of Ringer Swivels to firmly mount and expose circle hooks is a widely popular method. Some mates use an open-eye rigging needle as a makeshift puller to bring the chugger head into place over the O-ring, but a more streamlined approach utilizes a quick reloader fashioned from a length of #19 wire leftover from dredge teaser pin rigs.
With a tiny clasp bent into the end, mates can hook the O-ring and force it out of the lure head to accommodate a circle hook. The simple device not only allows for easy storage and organization of multiple chugger heads, but more importantly enables mates to simplify the process of adding skirts to rigged ballyhoo.
Steve Kenealy was first mate on the 86-foot Merritt Reel Tight and spent countless hours rigging ballyhoo on the docks of Isla Mujeres, Mexico. “We first started using the quick reloader down there about two or three years ago. We can go through a pile of baits when the sails are snapping and this simple tip helps automate the rigging process. It’s a great little device that was introduced to us by a local mate named Ricardo Núñez.”
The best mates know that the more systematic they become in their daily tasks, the less energy is required. Like poking out the eyeballs of a ballyhoo, where you could do it one fish at a time or line up multiple fish on an arrow shaft, this quick loader makes performing a repetitive task easier than ever.
Tournament Kite Fishing for Sailfish—The X-Factor
By Captain Nick Gonzalez
Kite fishing has been met by a number of innovations over the last 10 years. Electric kite reels have gotten faster, more reliable, and easier to use. To compliment these kite reels and increase efficiency, light, high-speed conventional reels with smooth drags and high gear ratios came into the market. A number of different rod manufacturers began making excellent rods with soft tips and moderate backbones that are ideal for kite fishing. In addition, circle hooks became mainstream and a number of different manufacturers make chemically sharpened circle hooks that are tournament legal and very affordable.
The Best Billfish Lure
The moment we live for
By Nick Smith
It occurred to me that this billfishing-with-lures thing we do is a lot like what I’ve done most of my life in the automobile business. It’s about attracting customers and eventually closing the deal. The oldest marketing adage in the book is AIDA. It was coined by some marketing genius way back in the late 1800s. It stands for: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Isn’t that exactly what we’re trying to do with our spread of teasers or lures? These hunks of plastic and rubber have to accomplish AIDA and do it consistently for us to have success with the billfish that we pursue so fervently.
Spencer Talbot on Bringing in a Winning Swordfish
Spencer Talbot is back, this time to talk about catching a winning swordfish at the HUK Big Fish Classic with the Real One. Talbot breaks down the day and just what their SiriusXM Fish Mapping was showing.
Fishing Slang
Photo courtesy Capt. Jack Sprengel, East Coast Charters.
By ITB Staff
As the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. And in the fishing world, there is generally more than one way to say just about anything.
If someone wants to refer to a big fish the following, depending on where the person is from, would be perfectly acceptable means of expressing the size of the creature: hog, lunker, sow, mogan, tank, slob, gorilla, donkey, cow, monster, fatty, huge, giant, pig, a full-grown one, a real one. And those are just the ones that are fit to print (there’s a certain Australian exclamation that is outstanding, too). The following is a breakdown of fishing slang.
Fighting Big Fish from A Center Console
By Capt. Adam Peeples
When I head offshore for a day of fishing my wife, Cadence, almost always says, “I hope you catch a big one today!” Catching a big fish is probably every captain and angler’s goal on any given fishing trip. We obsess over gear, baits, weather, moon phase, lucky shirts and hats – the list goes on. One thing that often gets overlooked, however, is the actual battle of man versus fish.
