Seeking Fishing Gear Advice, Please.

[Wheelguns]

Originally Posted by waterman46

Do you guys worry about catching a porpoise by mistake? Has it ever happened? Whenever I see them I quickly reel in the line, but nearly always they approach too fast for me to retrieve the line in time. Would hate to hook one! In some places we've been accompanied by porpoises for hours on end, so no fishing there.

In 25 years working on charter fishing boats, I have never hooked, or heard of anyone hooking a porpoise. Some times the tuna are swimming with porpoises, and we have trolled through them catching tuna, but never a porpoise.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Wheelguns

I have never hooked, or heard of anyone hooking a porpoise. Some times the tuna are swimming with porpoises, and we have trolled through them catching tuna, but never a porpoise.

No porpoises around here, but I'd say the same about dolphins.

[gpridgen]

I have never had a porpoise even approach an artificial lure, after hours in the area, playing in the wake. Rumor is they can tell by their "sonar", could be old wive tale though.

[Dave852]

I think the porpoise are too smart to eat plastic, metal or wood. I have trolled lines for tens of thousands of miles and they have never been even a bit curious about what I drag behind the boat. Now birds not so smart…

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by gpridgen

I have never had a porpoise even approach an artificial lure, after hours in the area, playing in the wake. Rumor is they can tell by their "sonar", could be old wive tale though.

I've seen, on TV, their brain is larger than ours. I wouldn't doubt there IQ is larger and know there are no free lunches.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Dave852

I think the porpoise are too smart to eat plastic, metal or wood. I have trolled lines for tens of thousands of miles and they have never been even a bit curious about what I drag behind the boat. Now birds not so smart…

But they do follow close behind and tread on whiting tails

[Triumph]

we use hand lines. We make our own lures from what we have in the trash can. We call them trash lures. See an example on my website, Also, we use kite reels instead of the Cuban yoyo's It's much faster and easier to bring in the line. We still hand over hand this line when bringing in a good fish. Some kite reels on Amazon come with good stout line that you can attach your leader to. And, speaking of leader, buy the best most invisible you can.

Bill

[SV Coronado]

These guys catch a lot of fish while sailing and put together a fairly informative video how they are successful.

https://youtu.be/5v601t_PnLw

[MVDarlin]

Recommend Penn Senator 6.0 or similar reels with sturdy poles. Plug with hoochie south of Oregon. Down riggers with herring in the Pacific NW. 80# line for salmon. Root beer colored silicone jiggs for halibut. Dont forget to set a crab pot overnight.

[alitaptap]

Fishing Gear Advice: fancy fishing gear may work but is no match for a can of 7-Up and a steel hook on a wire trace if there are dorado (mahi-mahi) around. Here's why . . .


Prior to a delivery out of Hong Kong to Sebana Cove, Malaysia, some years back we had purchased two fancy lures along with some 60lb mono-filament line, two hand-reels plus steel traces. Our objective was to dine on freshly caught fish every evening. The fancy lures were lost within the first two mornings and no fish were landed - maybe if we had used 120lb line things would have been different.


With the prospect of no fish for the coming week or more I rummaged in my bag and found a hand-made, 2-inch stainless hook that I had never used before - it had been gifted to me by a Philippine fisherman before departing on a delivery from San Fernando, Philippines, to Hong Kong.


With one hook but no lures (and 9 days still to go to Sebana Cove) we improvised. We cut/flattened a Coca-cola can and cut out of it a plausible leaf/fish shape about 4 inches long. We attached this "lure" to the eye of the hook with a small split-ring off my key-chain. The hook was on an 18 inch steel trace and we added a 4oz lead weight. We launched the gear over the side and waited; it was about one hour before sundown.


We waited about 20 minutes before we had a 5Kg dorado thrashing about in the cockpit.


That evening, with our enthusiasm buoyed by our success, we discovered another steel hook of similar size in a tool box and manufactured an additional plausible leaf/fish shape but this time from a cut/flattened 7-Up can, and we similarly rigged it on the second hand-reel.


Just after sunrise the next morning, with both lures trailing, we waited only 5 minutes before we had similar, 5Kg dorado in the cockpit from the 7-Up line.


Over 8 of the remaining 9 days (the last day, in the Singapore Strait, there were no fish) our data collection showed that the 7-Up lure averaged 6 minutes to catch a dorado (fastest was 1 minute!), while the Coca-cola lure averaged 19 minutes to catch a dorado.


We enjoyed dorado every morning and evening, and eventually ran out of recipes for the preparing thereof. My favorite was sashimi but a close second was, dorado on a skillet with olive oil & mustard seeds.


Final improvisation note: to avoid the need for a dedicated crew member to hold the line, once we had launched the lure over the side and let out 100+ feet of line, we passed the hand-reel through a rubber loop (actually a 1-inch wide slice of car inner-tube) attached to a stanchion just aft of midships, and then brought the line back to the cockpit and secured it to a cleat beside the helm; when a fish struck, the rubber loop would rapidly extend (good visual indicator) and the applied tension bedded the hook every time.


Conclusion: when fishing for dorado, a can of 7-Up beats a can of Coca-cola, a can of Coca-cola beats fancy lures