We all like the electronics, but just try a day on the water with no electronics, it really gets you to think and fish on instinct -

it helps to get you to follow the signs and fish where the fish are and not look at the chart plotter and fish the faithful grounds out of habit even though they are dead as a door nail.

Stuff the little games, I'll try for a grands worth of lures..Cheers.

Be afraid team, I want to enter. Bragging rights at stake here

Oh! And we released that fish, thanks to the single hook rig. The other, landed on a big 14 inch lure with a double hook, had to die as at boatside the 2nd hook in the rig flipped over and ripped the whole eye out of the socket, talk about gory, poor fish.... another pressing reason for single hooks for me from now on.....

cheers,

Stu.

Phew...back on track.....thanks FishB8!

and welcome back Mr. Foo.....

Thanks guys!

I've had so much luck with a bird rig on whites and spearfish that I can't wait to try one on striped marlin!  Run on the wave behind the long rigger with a small lure (but rigged with big enough hook and leader), this rig more than earns its keep and catches meat fish for the boat, it's just been a very consistent performer for me.  I confess I don't like big birds, the 8.5" Boone boat-hull style hard bird is my favourite but the standard Mold Craft soft bird which is about the same size is also O.K.  The other post I selected the 6 1/2" skirt size mini plunger to run behind the bird (it'll also run well on its own) but it was a hard choice to pick that over my other favourite, a small weighted bullet head in pink/white or ice blue over pink.  Whites and spearfish happily chow down on bullets and the Hawaiians catch lots of juvenile striped marlin on these straight tracking no-action lures, I've come to appreciate them much more than I used to do.  If I had a lot of time to fish N.Z. I would definitely like to try the bigger bullets (9 1/2" skirt size) in the long rigger and stinger positions. 

I'll add my thought to the comments made by the others on running cupped face lures alongside slant faced lures.  I agree with Roddy that the short outrigger position is generally the best place to position a cup faced lure if all the other lures are slant faced.  Because of the high line angle, it tends to give the lure a great deal of lift and especially if you like to run a pattern quite close to the boat i.e. 2, 3, 4, 5th waves, a lot of slant face lures will jump in the short rigger position and a cup faced lure can be a very good candidate because of the way it holds water.  If you are fishing your lures further back i.e. 3, 4, 5, 6 which I personally prefer to do (at least until the fish tell me that my boat is extremely good at raising fish short), the short rigger position is much less problematic and a variety of lures can be fished in that position especially if you have the nous to control the height of your rigger clip somewhat. 

Where I disagree (with the greatest respect) with Roddy is that lengthening the head of a cup face lure gives it greater stability.  I believe what the extra length on a lure does is give it extra lift and my personal favourites for a cup faced lure to be fished in a position with a lot of rigger lift is something with a big face and quite a short head i.e., Pakula Rat/Mouse or Beer Barrel.  The latter is probably my favourite cup face shape because it has a distinct quite aggressive head shaking action which won't be impeded so much should one choose to fish the lure with heavier leader and hooks, whilst not being as radical as one of the long chuggers i.e. Patriot, Chatterbox.  That's not to say the Sprocket, Longshot style lures are not useful as they certainly are, but for the situations I put a cup face lure into the water I favour the Beer Barrel shape. 

cheers - dustin

Roy,

     I have two of the jet heads you speak of, I went a step further and threaded a daisy chain effect of 100mm skirts up the trace, each with a 25grm lead placed in the heads.

I have to run this off 37kg because of the weight and drag, but when we're in  a hurry to get somewhere above normal trolling speed...........yellowfin city..........yahoo

I can't beleive I let that one out

Dustin - good to see you again senor. Thanks for your disagreement. Made me realise that I hadn't really expressed myself very well earlier !! What I should have said was that in my choice of four lures for the Kiwi Legend Pack I have chosen a long cupped-faced lure !! Reason being that with three slant-heads in the pack I have all the action I want. Tangaroa (AKA Vulcan) in particular is really aggressive and in that scenario I want the odd lure out there to be able to slide along all day no matter what the conditions to provide the easy-to-eat odd-man-out proposition. Whilst I fully admit that a shorter headed lure will be more aggressive I'm not looking entirely for that if ya see what I mean ! I'm also not entirely in agreement with you about stability. I'm sure in my mind that the longer the head the more stability you'll have (I may be wrong of course, and naturally I will accept defeat gracefully). When you run for home with 60 knots of south-easter hauling your ass along, I bet my long headed popper is out there longer than your short stubby thing (speaking of lures of course....grin). . And, when you pull that clip to the top of the rig your plonker will tumble a long time before my popper. So, in some circumstances I would call the longer lure a better all-rounder that the stubby guy anyway, which, of course, is the reason I chose him in the first place (talked myself into that one...hmm). Well, that's my view of it, grin. Your turn.

Peter M - thanx for your comments about Slackline's questions and putting me straight. I got put off track there ! Oh, while I do concur that the odd-one out is a good strategy sometimes, I don't always follow it - I have to admit that most of the time I have pretty much four different options out there head-wise and four different colour combos too - this gets me really confused, especially when they bite one particular lure and I can't work out whether it's the colours or the action they like !

Stu - I take it that Roddy and Kerren have matched Petes offer of $1,000 of free product for the board member who bags the 1st marlin of the season using one of their lures?

I'd love to put up $1000 worth of lures senor, but -

1) I'm kinda plugged out at present what with Kerren starting a comp in Jan with my stuff

2) also this idea of Bushpig's if it gets started (I know, it's only a fun thing, but it's a big deal for me 'cos I only have about 2 lures in NZ at present.  Matt has one and Obald the other, Kerren swopped his for a pint one night in some pub I hear.....)

3) I think Pete might have a slight advantage over me in having a couple of thousand lures dotted around your coastline, all looking to win a prize !

4) I give away too much stuff already

5) I have my own competition on my site that also means giving stuff away........I think I've done my bit !!

Good to hear you had a fine time in Vanuatu, sorry the winds blew ! E-mail coming privately....

Roddy