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Techniques of live bait presentation on heavy tackle

For the west coast stand-up angler bait presentation at any time, is paramount. Whether we are sitting at Hurricane bank or drifting over a school of 100+ pound bluefin, the object is to get your bait as far from the boat, as fast as possible and in the most pristine manner. Presentation is the single most important item to getting bit that we have to consider. The problem with presentation is that it's not a single thing, but rather an accumulation of knowledge through written material or personal experience. Presentation is something that changes by the day, hour, even by the minute. What was working yesterday, doesn't always produce today. This is why we keep coming back, because we never quite learn everything on how to get a fish to bite. We never will, that is why they invented purse seine nets. Heavy stand-up gear, 80 pound and up, hinders us even further, in this article we will broach some of the overlooked techniques, less fished areas, and being different.

Tackle- Hook sizes are critical. You will want to fish with the biggest possible hook that the bait can carry and still get a bite. Let's face the music here, fish are line shy and hook shy most of the time we are sitting on the anchor or the school has somehow been associated with the boat for a longer period of time. We can't just jump on the band wagon and use 1/0's, that won't work, we will end up either breaking the hook or pulling the hook, because it didn't set into enough tissue. What is working for the general population right now are:

Knots are always an important matter. We are looking for small compact knots that contain two rounds of mono going through the eye or ring of the hook. Excellent examples for mono or fluoro in diameters smaller than 100 pound are the Trilene, three turn double-uni, Erwin and Miller knots. If you are tying a knot at the hook in mono or fluoro in the diameter larger than 100 pound then you can get away with the standard single round going through the eye, such as the San Diego, three turn single-uni. Once you get into breaking strengths of 130 or more you are really looking at abrasion resistance instead knot strength.

Short top-shots have revolutionized the way we are fishing now and immensely help the angler with live bait presentation. The fact is that it is easier for a sardine to pull 130 pound super braid through the water instead of tring to pull 130 pound monofiliment. We are now able to have a greater sense of feel, since the spectra or super braind has no stretch and we can detect what is going on at the end of our line and when we are going to get a bite by the erriatic movements of the sardine or mackeral. Another thing is that we can get away with fishing heavier tackle than years previous, the small live bait is towing just a short piece of heavy mono, its much easier for everyone to jump up in mono size. This point alone has made a major contribution to the landing of giant yellowfin tuna in the past three of years. A couple of key things about short top-shots is that you want a connection that passes easily through your guides. Being thirty feet or shorter this connection will be transversing your guides quite a bit and you don't want to be having to pull some connection knot through each guide on every cast or haveing your bait snap off because a tag end caught a guide on the way out. I would suggest learning how to serve or properly crimp your connection or buy them from one of the quality producers of top-shots. All mass produce top shot are not equal, don't skimp here, remember we are going after big fish. Basil(BHPtackle.com) or Sano tackle(BigFishHappen.com) top shots are of the highest quality on the market right now.

Bait selection- I won't bore you with the oh so common analogy's of the hardest bait to catch in the tank is the one you want on your hook or you catch more fish at the tank than at the rail. Instead here are a couple of overlooked tidbits for you. Have you ever noticed the color change that takes place on a sardine or makeral after it has been put into a white hand well or has been in the bait tray? They turn a light or neon green, its a natural camoflage, something that happens to most fish. The problem that exsits is that once you put one of these light neon green bait on your hook, then get it into the water its camoflage makes it stand out like a thumb print in wet varnish. This is not natural. They do work, sometimes, when the fish are really biting. What will work better for you, especially in demanding circumstances, are baits that come right out of the main tank. The baits that are still dark green in color are the ones that you want, these are the baits that will match closest to the chummed baits still swimming in the vacinity of the hull. Those neon ones might look good, but its my suggestion to stay away from them. Next, its not always the biggest is best. Many, many times there are instances that the tuna will want a specific size of sardine, yellowfin and albacore are bad about this, bluefin not so much. Bluefin seem to prefer the bigger baits, but don't fall into the routine that this is a rule and always so. Remember, presentation is always evloving, changing from day to day. No hard fast rules apply to live bait angling, its a fluid process.

Hook placement- First have it in your mind where you are going to pin the hook through your bait, before you pick it up. Try and hold your bait gently. Use the three finger method, thumb and index fingers over the eyes(sort of like blinders on a horse), pinky finger holding the tail. There are four main places of hook placement, crosswise through the nose, belly(at the base of the pelvic fins), shoulder, and behind the dorsal fin. Each one of these spots has its time and place.

Crossed through the nose is what most anglers use day in, day out. It works good for the long soak and the sardine will sort of swim its way back in to the boat during the retreive. The problem that I have with this, is that everyone is using this method. Me, I want to be different. How many times have you noticed that one angler hooking up more often than everyone else. Ask yourself, could it be due to the fact that he is hooking his bait differently? In a magazine article written many years ago by Rich Holland, he interviewed the notorious Jim Mitchell and asked him what he was doing to get the bites he did when others couldn't get a sniff. Jim's reply was " I dare to be different". That one phrase of Jim's opened my eyes to a whole plethora of possibility's in just hook placement, much less everything else about fishing "around" the boat. Hook placement is the easiest way to be different, by just a simple re-situation of the hook from nose to shoulder or belly to tail you can increase the amount of attention the predators will give you.

The belly region is great to be able to feel your bait. Its a super place to use when the fish are biting close(within 200 feet) to the boat. A sardine will take off like there is hell fire on their heels when dropped in the water with a slight bit of tension when pinned in this spot. Since they swim off in such a fine fashion is the main reason this works so well.

The shoulder region is the hot new place to put your hook. You will notice its the same spot we use to pin baits on for the kite and balloon rigs, yet it works just as well for the fly-line. The sardine swims well, but maybe, one of the reasons this position works so well is that the hook is sort of hidden. Sort of. Tuna feed in a vertical manner, they will hang down there at fifty feet or so. When they spy a tempting morsel, the fish rockets up, almost vertically, snatch's the baitfish then retreats to the comfort zone of fifty feet. Since the tuna is looking at baits from below, wouldn't make sense to pin your hook to the back of the bait? Wouldn't this give a less of obtrusive appearance, than say, a hook protruding out of the sardines belly? Makes sense to me and in thinking in this fashion I will give myself another confidence building step. Is it true that the hook is more hidden? We will never know. Probably not. Tuna's of all speices have tremendous eye sight, but they are dumb. Their IQ more than likely dosn't exceed 6, the problem we encounter is that they are instictual. They have millions of years of feeding on baitfish without hooks and lines attached to them. When something is amiss and it doesn't look right is when we, the angler, stop getting bites.

Lastly, we have the tail area, behind the dorsal fin. Be careful here, it is easy to to go too deep, hit the spine and mortally wound your baitfish. A positive note is that as the bait is running away from you, it creates a lot of vibrations that are easy to feel via the super braid. This position seems to keep the bait more on the surface. When you see boil's and splash's around or behind the boat it tells you the fish are feeding near the surface and that is what they are looking for, surface orientated baits. This is the time to use a hook position that keeps your baitfish swimming near the surface.

Casting- If everyone could repeat after me please, "there is no such thing as overhead casting a 50 size of reel with a sardine attached to my hook". Good now we are on the same page. Overhead casting small baits on large gear only results in baits hitting the water hard and landing about twenty feet(at the most!) away from you. Admit it. Once we are past this we can go on to the second step. Underhand lobs rule. It may not get any further than that overhead cast, but the positives out weigh the negatives. First the bait enters the water softly, no scales are removed. Second, you are in direct contact with the bait as soon as it hits the water, which sets you up for step three which is a simple back pedal on the spool to give that bait just a little pull backwards. This little pull backwards gets that sardine to scoot off in the opposite direction, away from the boat. Every fish out here acts the same way, sharks, tuna, yellowtail, marlin, whatever. The harder you pull on them the harder the fish will pull back. Its the same with sardine, its just so much easier to overwhelm the small baitfish. You have to finesse the bait away from the boat. If it stops, bump it with another back pedal on the spool, once he starts in the right direction help it out by a forward pedal on the spool. Remember, your poor little sardine is already toting a huge hook and towing a chunk of heavy fluorocarbon. Always keep in contact with your bait. If he won't swim away from the boat, go back to the bait tank and start over. Don't waste your time with uncooperative baits, just get a new one.

Areas to fish(around the boat)- Just last trip, I watched a passenger hook fish after fish. The other anglers watched closely and imitated what he was doing to the T, what hook he was using or pound test and even where he was hooking his baits. But, not one of them followed through with thier observations and made the crucial last step of fishing around the boat instead of fishing right behind the boat. What I am about to tell you may get me into some trouble. Some of those "in the know" pro's have been using this technique for years without many prying eyes taking note. It envloves some physical work, maybe that's why its not so popular, its not easy, but it works and sometimes it works really good.

Here is the set up: When the boat is at anchor with the current running back off the stern. Pin your bait on, usually in the belly or tail, run up to the bow and underhand lob your bait into the water. Immediately back pedal on the spool to get the bait to run straight away from the boat, as far and as fast as possible. As the current takes hold of the belly in your line, follow it back towards the stern. Now you are fishing an area where there is virtually no pressure. There will be fifteen or twenty anglers fishing off the stern, but only you fishing the triangular area from the bow to the gates. Times that by two, with both sides of the boat and now you have a whole new area to get bites in. You don't have the competition of fifteen other baits, granted there may be a few more boils behind the boat, but that doesn't mean that all the feeding fish are behind the boat. If you go up stairs sometime, while the boat is at anchor, ask to see the sonar. If there are any fish to be seen at that time I am sure the Captian will be more than happy to point them out. The first thing you will notice is that they are just not behind the boat, they are all around the boat. It just so happens that the current has everyone fishing in the stern. Its much easier just to stand there and pay out line into the current than running up and down the rail with new baits pinned to your hook every five minutes. At least when your not pulling on fish..........

Big Fish Happen,
Bruce A. Smith