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your favorite wahoo spread.

6118 Views 8 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  Bill Fisher
I think 2 morauders or modulures on the flat lines. 2 yozuri hydro mags on the short riggers. 1 pakula sproket on one long rigger and 1 black bart pelagic breakfast on the other. Finally a bigmikes 809 shot gunned with a bird in front. Colors would be purple and black,lumo, and a dorado color. the shot gun would be pink and white. Use a witchdoctor as a teaser. If that did not work I would go to old faithfull and pull islanders rigged with ballyhoo. Also has anyone used the williamson ballyhoo or the manns ballyhoo behind an islander. They look good and rigging would be easy. I hope that you share all your deepest secrets and tactics for wahoo fishing.
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definately no experience here...

But I did see some rather LARGE spoons on clearance at Cabelas... does anyone pull those? I would think if you swivel the leader, it would put off a buttload of flash. I imagine it would jump and dart all over the surface throwing off a flash that would pull the beasts from the deep.
They make some bullet head lures with blades attached to the hook. They flash but also seem to fall off rather easy. I think they are called bombs. These lures are as heavy as 36oz which means high speed trolling. I have never trolled for wahoo faster than 10 knots but hear it can be very productive with the right lures and gear. At 16 to 20 knots you better be ready.
Hey Aston, My father made some of the first wahoo bomb lures. They were popular because of the wieght. You could cast them a long ways. They were not popular as trollers.
The reason, because they were being used to fish off the long range boats out of San Diego. The boats cruised at about 12 and trolled at maybe 8.
The "wahoo Bombs" wich were the nickname long before a product name and I am talking about late 70's.
As far as high speed trolling the pioneer in my mind was a guy named leonard who owned stragler lures. He owed everybody and set in mexico, La Paz I think??
But if you would buy him dinner and a few drinks he would teach a newbie like me evrything I wanted toknow. No one else took him seriously. So He was the first but I was one of the first. The diference between OE lures and my lures was the fish we were after. The lures were made on the same machines. We took turns. I owned the machine, but my dad knew how to run it.
He made bombs and I made some of the first high speed trolling lures and the first heavy trollers.
My dad also made some of the best Mako lures and the first quick switch lures. I have seen other lures say they did but he was making them in the seventies. It's interesting that almost all of them had exact copies of his tail piece.
BigMike
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They make some bullet head lures with blades attached to the hook. They flash but also seem to fall off rather easy.

a small piece o'rubber band or a bit o'surgical tubing (even better) speared onto the hook between the blade and the barb'll help hold'em on

i've added spinner blades to a few lures in-the-past, and because they easily slipped over the barb, i did just what i mentioned cuz it seemed like every time i'd go to pick one up, i'd see the blade in the bottom o'my box or have it fall off
A trick used by bass fisherman to add a trailer hook to a spinner bait. Talking about the piece of surgical tubing...good idea bill fisher
Even with 5 people on board you are going to have a nightmare trying to get the lines cleared fishing 7 lines for Hooters! 5 max and once you find the fish only 1 line in the water per person is enough. Hooters travel in packs and if you get 3 or 4 hooled up trolling 7 lines you are going to have a real heartbreak when you loose a couple of fish because of tangles.

2 plugs really short (20') 2 other baits on riggers and an islander type in blue/white with some meat stuffed inside 200-300' back is fine.
Even with 5 people on board you are going to have a nightmare trying to get the lines cleared fishing 7 lines for Hooters! 5 max

i can see where that me be a problem for a less exerienced captain and crew or a smaller boat but not for me........ 7 to 9 lines out when i'm trolling (and that doesn't include teasers)........... only when i'm fishing strictly for blue marlin or 'hi-speed' trolling for wahoo would i consider trolling with as few as 5 lines out

where i'm at we don't have any 'wahoo only' waters or wahoo tourneys that would justify a 'wahoo only' spread except for hi-speed trolling and for most hi-speed trolling you wouldn't be dragging diving lures like yozuri bonitos*

if i drug a few diving baits in my usual spread i could troll up to 11 or 13 lines at a time w/out a problem but when i troll alotta lines out it's usally because i'm offering up a smorgasbord of lures to attract a variety of species from marlin and wahoo down to bf and dorado

if i'm into a good wahoo bite, i might go with as many as 5 wahoo lines in the water but will keep the other lines varied cuz i know there's always other fish around or the wahoo wouldn't be there

*here's a lure i wanna try for hi-speed wahooing........
http://images.cabelas.com/is/image/cabelas/s7_122846_007_01?$main-Medium$

they claim this 8 1/8", 8-oz, lure is engineered to run true and can be trolled at speeds exceeding 20 mph (i wonder how that might work for some o'you popper fans casting with high speed spinning reels around rigs and ripping it outta there for a hoo bite,........ hmmmm :rolleyes: )

anyway, you just don't catch the big wahoo (60#+) by hooking up with 4 or 5 at a time even if you think 'they' run in packs too........ one thing nice about big hoo is they're gonna fight deep and straight to the boat as-long-as you keep it in gear........ all you gotta do is clear just a few rods where you wanna boat the fish and even then you should only have to bring in those lines a little shorter than the others to avoid tangles but most everything can be left out............ 60# hoo're gonna be about 5' long and i got 11' of transom to deal with'em....... one person can stand in one corner and gaff'im in the head and the other can stand across in the other corner and gaff'im in the tail and just swing'im aboard between each other (been there/done that)

if all i'm catching is a buncha dink wahoo that're only running about 4' long, bring'em on!....... the more-the-merrier............ but i ain't gonna go down to just 5 rods just because o'that
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and since ashton ain't had any activity on this board since july of '07, i'm not gonna share any o'my secrets of how to troll up big hoo........ didn't devulge anything back then.......... ain't gonna do it now! lol!

i'd sooner come closer to telling you what little i (or anyone else) really knows about marlin

(some cards are just best held close to the chest)

y'all wouldn't believe me anyway
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