Long Lost Sails

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deepblack
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Long Lost Sails

Post by deepblack »

Hi All,
Well, it's finally happened, after countless hours of either trolling, talking and obsessing about landing a billfish I actually nailed not one but two! The story started as a vague idea sometime last week when the long range weather reports were looking promising for the weekend along with the tail end of a set of neap tides that would have the water nice and clear for a crack at a sail. Due to other stuff going on Monday was locked down as the day and whole galaxy of line, leaders,teaser making and gar rigging ensued in preparation for the big day.

After an eternity Monday arrived and we made good time to Dundee with the road being in reasonable shape apart from a few wet patches towards the end. A quick chat with one of the local guides revealed that Long Lost might produce so by 7 o'clock we were on our way. As we approached the Long Lost grounds the area came alive with schools of small tuna being worked by terns and booby birds, it was looking promising but after a solid couple of hours working the area hard with the teasers there was nothing doing so the call was made to go to the city.

Well, that was a waste of time! Three quarters of the way there and the water was dead, no birds, no bait, no nothing.... By this time I'm kicking myself for breaking the golden rule, you don't leave fish to find fish, :banghead: and so the decision was made to back track to the tuna schools and have a cast to them to break the monotony and then get back into some trolling.

We spot the tuna schools pretty much where we left them and decide the closest one is as good as any and do the usual thing and get upwind of them on the leading edge of the school when my mate Matt starts screaming at me that there's a sail cruising off the port bow, sure enough I look over and there's one of the most beautiful sights you will ever see, a slender sickle tail cutting a trail through the glare offf the water.

Thankfully the pitch bait rod is ready and waiting and I lob a circle rigged gar ahead of the fish and wind it quickly back, no dice... Another cast and at the last moment jackpot! Two sails materialise behind the bait, I pause for a second and twitch the bait in front of the lead fish and without the fish seeming to move my bait just disappears! Oh baby, Come on! Come on! I drop the rod tip and flip the bail arm open and wait for something to happen. with my heart pounding out of my chest, the Sail then goes nose down in the water and does this weird little shimmy then starts slowly moving away from the boat (all this took place maybe five meters from us) so I give it a slow five count, snap the bail arm closed and mentally cross all my fingers, the rod slowly loaded up and then the fish must have felt the hook turn into its jaw because at that moment all hell broke loose! Before I could blink the Sail had done four hot laps of the boat and then peeled a cool hundred meters of line off the spool in seconds finishing the run with the first of its jumps. :shock: It made three more runs after this getting shorter and slower each time and maybe the same in jumps before we had it boatside with a hand around its' bill, a couple of happy snaps on the bow of the boat, pop the circle out and a quick swim later, that's my first sail swimming away to fight another day. 8-) Hell Yeah! That was fun! Let's do it again!

We caught three more for the day using bait and switch techniques. I scored another and deckie Matt busted his cherry with two as well so all in all a fantastic day. I will follow up this post with the GPS marks and tackle/rigs/techniques we used at a later date but for the record the score for the day was 10 raised 4 hooked 4 boated and subsequently released.
Cheers,
John.
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adam
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Post by adam »

:applause: Very nice work John, sight casting sails :shock: Brilliant :drinking1:
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Post by double haul »

Welcome to the club mate and what a way to crack it. Its amazing how many fish you will see cruzeing along on top when its glassed off.
:mrgreen:
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Post by Pecheur »

Nice one!

Or should I say nice two!
:wink: :mrgreen:

Congratulation, specially if it was your first time trying for them.

Have a good day,
Pecheur
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Post by scottmac »

Awesome! :mrgreen: Cant wait to bust my cherry! :angel:
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Post by andrew.south »

Great post, will have to give that a try one day looks awesome... :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
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Post by Mud »

WOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!!!!! Well in John and Matt!!
Its not a crisis unless there is blood around.
If there is blood around......well its a police matter...
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Post by bunji »

well done guys betcha a few cold ones were had that night :cheers:
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Post by UNCLDUG »

How awsome is that 8-) 8-) 8-) what a way to go,10 raised and 4 landed :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: .in 2 weeks ill be there and with a 1/4 of the luck u guys had ill b stoked.Great post and im keen 2 hear more :smoking: :smoking:
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Post by max »

Well dons lads I bet its a day you wont forget in a hurry :fishing:
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Post by deepblack »

Hi All,
In my last post I promised to follow up with a run down on the rigs, tackle and techniques we used to boat some sails. Please note I am in no way an expert this is just what worked for us on the day and what I will be sticking with from now on simply because it gets you up close and personal with the fish and lets every person on board get involved with the hook up. So here it is: The method we were using is a bastardised version of switch baiting much like what Double Haul has described previously in his posts but which I will rehash again.

First things first, teasers are integral to this type of fishing. They don’t have to be anything fancy. We started by rigging four beer cans in a row on each of two teaser lines constructed of 200lb wire with snap clips between each can to be able to replace any stuffed ones. I then raided my collection of old pusher style lures (anything cheap will do!) and added three lures to each line. I then finished off with a couple of pink squid at the tail end. Spacing between each can/lure was around 50cm giving a total wire length of just over 4m and a lumo bead was used in front of each crimp to stop anything pulling through. Each of these rigs was then attached to 10m of good quality cord on large hand reels terminated with a large ball bearing coast lock swivel for attaching to the teaser. When it came to fishing with them, the teasers were simply tied of to the bollards on each corner of the boat with most of the cord paid out and the hand reel tucked out of the way.

I think tackle comes down to personal preference but as Double Haul has mentioned spin tackle reigns supreme for the pitch bait rod for casting to any surface cruising fish and to be honest any gumby can use one and there is a lot less to go wrong when the last thing you need is an over run on a solid fish. (This happened to us by the way, the feeling of sheer helplessness bites…at least the fish was a mack and not a sail! :banghead: ) Pure switch-baiting involves running only teasers out the back and pitching either a live or dead bait when the fish is raised and pulling the teaser away ie. Switching the fish from the teaser to the bait. I suspect when the macks get going up here that’s probably going to be the way to go but in the meantime we chose to tow a couple skipping gars rigged on circle hooks. These are set so the gar is outside of the teaser on either corner 1-2m behind the last teaser squid in a clear window of water. The theory behind the two skipping gars worked for us. The idea being that a rig already deployed was much quicker to switch the fish over to whilst the circle stopped the fish being poorly hooked or spooked as is highly possible by a traditional j hook rigged bait. If a fish came up behind the bait we just free spooled it straight down its’ throat. This could also be especially useful when trying to put a novice angler onto a fish. In the meanwhile this also freed up our pitch bait rod to try and take any cruising fish or have a go at a double hook up when a pod is raised.

Having said tackle comes down to personal preference I am going to say one thing, IF YOU’RE NOT USING CIRCLE HOOKS YOU ARE DOING YOURSELF AND THE FISH A HUGE DISERVICE. Don’t get me wrong circles won’t work for all species of fish, but, given the insanely hard and bony nature of a billfishes mouth and the abrasiveness of the bill and surrounds, (just for the record my arm looks like it has gravel rash at the moment from a brief contact) not to mention easy releasing of the fish, circles just make sense. This is probably the best reason though; from observation it appears that if a sail doesn’t feel the pr..k of a hook it doesn’t spook very easily, for example of the 4 fish we caught only one (the largest) hooked up on the first try. Of the other 3 fish two dropped the bait once and the remaining fish had the gar pulled out of its mouth a staggering five times before we came up solid! What this tells me is two things, one, our hooks were perhaps a touch too big and that we possibly should have downsized from the 8/0 owners we were using to maybe a 6/0. Keep in mind though; going too small with circles can be an even bigger sin as the hook works on its’ ability to roll over the jaw hinge. The other lesson learnt with circles on sails is if you do drop a fish on trying to get a hookset don’t give up! Chances are because the fish hasn’t felt the hook you can still have another crack at it. In fact I would have to say the little bloke that we dropped on multiple occasions just seemed to get more revved up because he thought his prey was getting away on him! By the end of it he was absolutely pouncing on the bait.

Circles do take some getting used to though and I have fished with them for a while for other species, so there are a few tips I feel qualified to pass on. The number one piece of advice I can give you is take your time! This has been mentioned on this site on several occasions, but, once again it can’t be stressed enough, if you strike before the fish has a chance to swallow the bait you will just pull it out of his mouth and whilst you might get another shot you might not too. I count to seven by chanting one one thousand... and so on, but you may have to figure it out for yourself depending on how quick you count and trust me its’ not as easy to do as it sounds! Secondly, DON’T STRIKE, just slowly push the drag lever up or feed off a metre or so of line and flip the bail arm closed. If you do strike you won’t get as second chance as your bait will be pulled out of range but if you don’t strike if you miss the hook up your bait will still be within the fishes’ feeding zone. The last tip is actually two in one because they serve the same purpose, using a long relatively soft rod and mono line increases cushioning in the system thereby delaying the hookset and giving you some “fudge factor” on your timing. Also; given the potential size and speed of the fish you may encounter mono is very forgiving to less than perfect reaction times during the fight too. “Think Truck Not Trout” was the favourite saying amongst my mates and I when I used to fish for Southern Blues in the South East of Tasmania, using braid on big, fast pelagics is more akin to punishment! If you are into overheads the Live fibre ZWS70LJ 6’6” 6-8kg coupled with a TLD15 loaded with 8kg line is pretty hard to beat. I have three and I just love them. In spin I am using a Shimano T-Curve “King Mack” 8-12kg and first impressions are pretty good. In the end though just stick a spool of 8-10kg on a suitable outfit and go for it!

All of this is a waste of time if you don't see the fish in the spread though so the two points Double Haul brought up earlier are vitally important use the best polarised sunnies you can get your hands on and have someone watching the spread 24/7. My next investment is going to be a set of quality specs as the ones I have been using just aren't up to scratch!

Last, but not least, here’s the Circle hook rig we were using for those of you who are interested. It’s not quite as easy to tie as Double Hauls rig but it does have the advantage of not needing the hook and leader until you are going to use it, meaning you can prep your baits the night before and not worry about having to make just as many leaders as baits.

Sorry about the formatting I'm a computer Gumby so the instructions for each image are in the file description.

Well that's about it! Tight lines to all and good luck!
Cheer's :cheers:
John.
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Post by deepblack »

Sorry Guys the first comments cell in the instructions for the garfish rigging didn't display properly step 1 should read:

1. To prep the bait start by running your thumb down its’ belly to get rid of anything in the gut and flexing the bait side to side to break the rigor doing both these things will make it more supple and therefore it will swim better in the water. Trim the bill as shown in the pictures and remove the eyes by poking them through a suitably sized piece of dowel or the blunt end of a thick pen. You are now ready to rig the bait, take a 60cm length of waxed rigging floss. Double it over and slide on a 1/8-ounce or larger bean sinker that matches the size of your bait. Alternatively if you want to run the rig as a skip bait you can run a small piece of lumo tubing or similar in place of the sinker.

Cheers,
John.
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Post by scottmac »

Top bit of information John :drinking1: Never seen that way of rigging before.
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Post by max »

Good info there John,I thought you would be better off having the circle hook say 4" in front of the gar on a loop but you say that the hook up this way is ok so thats what matters a :mrgreen:
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Post by UNCLDUG »

:cheers: John,a great step bystep guide,really good for a novice like myself,between your and DH info im feelin rather confident in landing one of these speedsters,thanks for taking the time and sharing whats been working for you :cheers: :cheers: :mrgreen:
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