Splash Bar?

[BW28]

I am going to try one this year in the middle of the spread along with squid chain teasers off each rigger, this will add about 30 baits to my spread. Anyone use the splash bars? Had any luck with them? Any tips?
Seth
BW28

[Undaunted]

if you are referring to running some small birds on your squid bars, then yes. This past week was the first time I ran some. I really like the action and noise they made. Did they improve our overall catch of tuna not sure, since others were catching fish on regular spreader bars.

3 out of the 5 tuna we caught in 2 days were off of our bars.

[Ice Cream Man]

Depends on what your targeting...........

Use a bird inshore on my longest line ( WWB ) when trolling in a area where there are alot of others as a visual to keep them from running thru my spread..........

Use Dasiy Chains & birds for Mahis.......

The last trip had a small Fender Toad in the middle of the spread..........did not result in any more hook-ups........but if looks great in the prop wash diving & surfacing like an attacking fish. The crew liked watching it........Hope this helps.........ICM

[offshore]

Our spreader bars were pretty hot last week. Mike gave me some birds to run on them but I havent had a chance to try them. I try to runn two spreader bars on the short flats every trip. If you run them down the middle you will need a center rigger to keep the front of the bar out of the water...Mark

[jonafare]

We ran 2 30" bars with birds, lots of action-- cool to look at, ran beautifully. We set them out after several hours of no action. Immediately brought 2 dolphin into the boat -- but not on the bars. Coincidence??? maybe, maybe not... I am a bally man - not much on artificials even though we put bally on the bar for the bite. However, speaking of artificials, we caught a 62# tuna on a Man-Stretch. I think I'm gona try more artificials - bars included.

[BW28]

Thanks for the input.
I've run the splash bar on a few trips now and like the commotion it makes, only had one hook-up on it. However, I run it in the center off the leaning post right behind my 2 flat lines and in the 4 trips we ran it We had 6 strikes on the flat lines compared to 2 strikes all last year! Coincedence?
Mark,The bar is through the middle of a
12" playaction bird and has two more 5" birds on each corner. It floats the bar really well and doesn't let the bar dig.
Also, been running two more spreader bars, 1 off each rigger. If I don't get them up in a clip I can't seem to get them to run in clean water without the bars digging.
That's why I built the splash bar, to have something that would run well off a flatline. So far so good.
P.S. the dolphin seem to love those blu/wht spreader bars.