Trolling for fish in blue water

[Kelpie]

Ok I'm going to set up a line with just the 1mm mono, and a swivel right at the lure itself. No separate leader. Recipe for disaster or good idea?

I've collected various different lures along the way, generally because the boy thought they looked cool. But I'm really struggling to get consistent advice on matching up lure size and weight with the line strength. The largest lure we have is 28g, 180mm. The smallest ones are half that weight and about 100mm.

 

[geem]

An update and a couple of questions.
We caught three fish on our way to the Canaries. The fish-chasing-a-squid setup certainly seems to work. First strike we got a mahi-mahi on each lure, and the next day we got a Bonito on the furthest aft lure. Very happy!

As originally set up there was no swivel before the first lure. Both the mono leader and the braided line have suffered some damage as a result, so we stopped fishing after we caught the Bonito.

I've been struggling to find heavy enough line here. Best I could get was some 1mm 46kg mono to make new leaders. I've also got a pack of 47kg swivels, and a whole bunch of fairly small lures.

What's a good length of leader to use? I'm guessing if it's too long it will stop me winding all the way in. So a rod length?? Or two rod lengths and hope it doesn't get caught in the eyes on the rod?

I've got heaps of the mono line so I could also just ditch the braided stuff entirely. But presumably I still need to put the swivel somewhere.

We run a 10ft leader. The swivel and clasp are then 10ft forward if the lure. Often the clasp will catch weed. Better if this is as far away from the lure as possible and you may still catch fish. We don't bother with a rod. More trouble than it's worth in my experience
My current favourite handline is the one we bought in Portugal last year. We saw lots of locals using them. Sort of a handline with a reel built in. The pink lure has landed plenty of fish. Seriously chewed. We put two lures together, one inside the other to give some bulk.
This one landed 5 fish between St Bart's and Antigua a couple of weeks ago

 

[Gerry]

Thanks. We’ve actually got a copy of that book and that’s where some of the advice has come from that appears slightly contradictory. (Perhaps I ought to read it again?) They certainly recommend reels and rods rather than yo-yos although they do say a multiplier clamped onto the rail can work.

I thought it was going to be full of practical advice, but a lot of the advice seems to be towards catching bigger and bigger fish. Certainly a lot of reports of very large fish being caught and how to catch bigger fish! We just want small fish that we can eat.

We used their advice on setting up a trailed line, with shock absorbers(!), heavy duty breaking strain on line and steel leaders. It has worked a treat for twenty odd years and we have only lost a handful of fish in that time.

 

[geem]

We used their advice on setting up a trailed line, with shock absorbers(!), heavy duty breaking strain on line and steel leaders. It has worked a treat for twenty odd years and we have only lost a handful of fish in that time.

Yes, we tie off the handling to a stern cleat. We then use a 1 metre length of 8mm elastic shock cord tied to a backstay and the fishing line. We keep the shock cord high on the back stay. When a fish strikes the shock cord takes the strike, the shock cord rattles the hand line on the deck and the shock cord attachment high on the backstay slides lower down the bavkstay. All indicators you have a fish on the line without the need for a constant watch

 

[Halo]

Call me a sad person but if are losing gear to fish what happens to the fish left swimming around with a mouth full of lure and trailing line. ? I can only imagine a long a sad end.
Trolling is something I don’t need to do and won’t do again.

 

[geem]

Call me a sad person but if are losing gear to fish what happens to the fish left swimming around with a mouth full of lure and trailing line. ? I can only imagine a long a sad end.
Trolling is something I don’t need to do and won’t do again.

Set up correctly you tend not to lose gear. We use 100kg monofilament line, medium sized hooks that bend out when you catch a large fish and let it go.
We crossed the pond earlier this year and didn't lose a lure yet landed 70kg of fish. Undersized fishing gear is another story

 

[Kelpie]

Call me a sad person but if are losing gear to fish what happens to the fish left swimming around with a mouth full of lure and trailing line. ? I can only imagine a long a sad end.
Trolling is something I don’t need to do and won’t do again.

It's something that worries me too. I don't think I'll ever want to purely fish for sport, but on long passages it certainly gives you something else to do and it tastes too good not to have a go.

I've barely started fishing, haven't lost any gear yet, and am upgrading what I have to reduce the chance of lost gear.

 

[Kelpie]

Thought I'd bump this thread now that we have done a little blue water trolling.

Fishing line is incredibly strong. I had a mixture of 22.5kg and 47kg line. None of it ever broke.
Hooks are surprisingly weak. By the time we reached the other side, most of our hooks had been bent or snapped. Obviously the bigger ones did better but even they could give up before the line broke. I should have brought spare hooks with me.
Lures themselves break too. I wasn't too surprised when this happened to smaller cheap lures, but our biggest lure also had the hooks ripped out of it.
And rods break as well. We had a rod lashed to the rail and something big decided to bite. The thing just splintered and snapped just below the reel. When I got the lure back in, the hooks were gone. Yet the 22.5kg line survived.

Anyway, it was worth doing and certainly gave us plenty to do. We caught several mahi and a big wahoo. We had another few big fish on the line but didn't manage to land them. I'd deliberately not wanted to use big gear and end up hooking monsters, but I think the downside of that is that you lose some fish.

What pleasantly surprised me was that we hardly lost any plastic gear in to the sea- just one lure in 3000 miles.

 

[geem]

Thought I'd bump this thread now that we have done a little blue water trolling.

Fishing line is incredibly strong. I had a mixture of 22.5kg and 47kg line. None of it ever broke.
Hooks are surprisingly weak. By the time we reached the other side, most of our hooks had been bent or snapped. Obviously the bigger ones did better but even they could give up before the line broke. I should have brought spare hooks with me.
Lures themselves break too. I wasn't too surprised when this happened to smaller cheap lures, but our biggest lure also had the hooks ripped out of it.
And rods break as well. We had a rod lashed to the rail and something big decided to bite. The thing just splintered and snapped just below the reel. When I got the lure back in, the hooks were gone. Yet the 22.5kg line survived.

Anyway, it was worth doing and certainly gave us plenty to do. We caught several mahi and a big wahoo. We had another few big fish on the line but didn't manage to land them. I'd deliberately not wanted to use big gear and end up hooking monsters, but I think the downside of that is that you lose some fish.

What pleasantly surprised me was that we hardly lost any plastic gear in to the sea- just one lure in 3000 miles.

We used hooks that bend out when a big fish gets on. That way we don't land something too big. We never lose hooks. We do use 100kg line. We don't lose lures. Just above the hook you can use reinforcement sleeves to stop the line from being bitten through. These work well. Our lures get tatty from constant fish strikes so need refurbishing.

 

[Bajansailor]

We had a rod lashed to the rail and something big decided to bite. The thing just splintered and snapped just below the reel.

Sounds to me like you had the brake on your reel adjusted too tightly perhaps?
Try using a handline instead - it is much easier really than using a rod.
To improvise a brake, you can use shock cord to dampen down the impact of the fish hitting the bait.
We have also wound the line a few times the 'wrong' way around a redundant sheet winch, so that when a fish strikes it pulls the line out steadily against the resistance of the turns on the winch.

 

[Kelpie]

Sounds to me like you had the brake on your reel adjusted too tightly perhaps?

It's a titchy little reel with no brake to speak of. It just ran out to the end and then snapped the rod. Big fish, small rod and reel! But I'm amazed the line didn't break.

I'm not going to replace the rod. As you say, handlines are far more practical. I thought the shock absorption of the rod would be helpful, and maybe it is, but it's a right faff trying to land something big when it's on a rod and you're trying to work off the cluttered stern of a yacht.