after watching many under water videos of how fish eat each other one thing that stands out is the fact that when a fish opens its mouth to swallow its food there are two elements which come into forced,
first the fish lungs forward towards its prey, then either hits it or in gulfs it straight off,
secondly is when the mouth opens "more so on larger fish" water rushes in which in turn helps snare the fish before it can escape,

when you compare a trolling lure to a live fish one thing is missing which makes it hard for a fish to catch your trolling lure, and that it cant be sucked into the mouth when the marlin opens its gob...

any takers on how to add something that would allow this to happen like drop back of some sort????  

How about something like I have tried to draw here, a really lite line that takes the weight of the lure as it's being trolled which leaves a "drop back" or some slack in the main line that takes up when the lite line breaks, allowing the lure to fall back in to its gob. Not sure how a lure would "swim" though.

Either that or a really good decky who keeps and eye on the lure and is quick enough to feed the lure back when the fish comes up!

I've been shown, when a fish is following a lure - leave rod in holder, with usual drag..pull line off rod to pull lure away from fish..it will follow, then when it comes at it again..drop the line back and let marlin sick it down.

Raging Bull wrote: How about something like I have tried to draw here, a really lite line that takes the weight of the lure as it's being trolled which leaves a "drop back" or some slack in the main line that takes up when the lite line breaks, allowing the lure to fall back in to its gob. Not sure how a lure would "swim" though. Either that or a really good decky who keeps and eye on the lure and is quick enough to feed the lure back when the fish comes up! Can you head me in the direction off the really awsome lure part I have Sea tal's and Pakula's will they qualify

i think now we have got to the suck and blow bit, any other direction we will end up talking about lesbians,
did your hear the one about jellybeans? 

could be right Peter,
the one that really got me thinking was the underwater footage of a Mako stealing swimmers off a dredge, it was in very slow mode and you could see when he opened his trap the fish straightened due to the vacuum it created from behind, but the fish never popped into his mouth, you could just about see the expression on its face change as it missed the fish, yeah bit over the top LOL.
didnt stop it from just about taking every fish off that dredge though, fast learners...
so you reckon marlin could be a little different to Mako's???

Peter as an aside there was a run of little makos (10-60 kg) a number of years ago off Tutukaka during the One Base Comp, from memory there was over 200 caught in 4 days fishing, with virtually all caught on lures. Some boats were getting up to 10 a day on lures.

Interestingly in the 30 years I have been involved in gamefishing using lures we have caught heaps on lures and have yet to lose a lure to a mako, they always hit the "tail" of the lure and so hook up on the back hook. The key thing is once you know it is a mako is to keep the boat going forward reasonably quickly.

we use no 32 rubber bands to the outrigger clips then about 3 to 5 kg drag, the line is loose between the rod and clip which creates a small drop back we also run our flats like this
we seem to get a better hookup than running straight through the roller trollers or directly off the rod tip
itseems to always comes back to how they are biting hungry or playing,

I thought normally the first hit was a bill strike to kill or stun the fish then like peter says it over takes and trys to swallow head first. they are very messy feeders thus why so many are foul hooked the bill and so on. a mako has a bigger mouth and seems to take its first bite from the tail of the fish, hense why you hook them a lot easier than marlin. last trip we landed 3 from three. :( if only marlin were so easy to catch. the only trick I can think of is letting the fish have a swipe then free dpooling the lure back to him like a stunned fish.