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Old 03-11-2018, 01:57 AM   #13
Fiskadoro
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,509
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. NiceGuy View Post
What appears to be significant fish marks haven't really helped me much either. When I see marks, that doesn't mean I catch anything more or less, relative to the marks. When I hookup, I can't say I ever saw relevant marks in the first place.
I wanted to come back to this one. When I travel from spot to spot gear up I watch the finder and if I see a decent fish mark I drop small Iron on them. I keep a rod rigged with a four once mega bait right in front of me just for this purpose.

This is actually an old tuna trick of mine. When paddy fishing offshore I watch the meter and if I see a good single fish mark swim through deep I'll drop Iron on them.

I use spinning tackle for this so I do not have to mind the rod. I just open the bail with the rod in the holder and let the iron fall. I then watch the meter and watch it sink. If the fish mark moves up before it gets to it I pick up the rod throw the bail and start reeling towards the surface as fast as I can. If the mega stops sinking I flip the bail and reel into the fish with the rod on the holder to hook up, if it passes the mark unmolested I stop it, then reel up to the level of the mark and jig it around a few times.

Offshore I've caught a lot of tuna doing this and even pulled up whole schools of them to the surface with that fast crank up. It's a good trick.

Inshore I've caught a lot of fish doing it mostly bass, a few smallish white seabass, but I once got a big halibut doing this in the northern portion of SMB. That last one is a funny story. I dropped the mega on a mark that was probably just a bass, it was a no go, but while I was jigging it around a larger mark came up off the bottom and hit it, and that was the Halibut. Hungry fish, I couldn't of missed it as it swallowed it all the way down it's throat. 26, 28 pounds, I forget the exact weight but a substantial fish. I must of gone back and intentionally jigged that exact spot a dozen times, but never hooked another fish there, just an anomaly.

I also do a version of this freshwater when fishing for larger stripers with big plastic trout in lakes like Castiac. I prefer the heavy Huddelston 8" trout because it sinks fast. It's crazy but you often will see very large single marks suspended off the bottom in relatively deep water. When you drop the Hudd down they definitely see it and sometimes will rise up twenty or more feet to check it out. I've had them follow the baits almost all the way to the surface from a over hundred feet of water but other then a few light bumps no takers. Not one!! I swear every time I almost have a heart attack, it's just so exciting, but I have yet to hook a fish doing it. I have no idea if the are big stripers, or just huge largemouth. One of these days though I'm going to hook one and it will be epic.

The trick only works in clean open water, like over sand or in open water offshore. You have to run high gain to see those individual fish, and in areas like La Jolla where you have lots of stuff in the water you just can't see them for all the marks on the screen. It's not the most epic strategy but I have had days where the only fish I caught we hooked this way, and it breaks up the boredom when traveling long distances over flat sand moving from drop to drop.

Last edited by Fiskadoro; 03-11-2018 at 11:53 AM.
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