Trying to create a new fishing lure

[vettnman]

I recently made an error in ordering lures and instead of spending more money on shipping than what the lures are actually worth, I thought about maybe making some kind of daisy chain with it. What do you think, would this work? Or should I just sell the lures and reorder what I actually needed? Thx guys

[Capt. Fred]

I used to troll a ton of stuff like that Dave. Then I moved below the DMZ and was introduced to ballyhoo. Those chains sure worked in the northeast canyons. I'd rig it with about 24 inches to the first one then about a 3 or 4 foot space to the second one. Or, get another bird and rig two sets. I'd rig that type with the bird, 6 to 10 feet of leader and then the lure.

[vettnman]

Would you troll it meatless Fred? It's so small, that a ballyhoo would dwarf it.

[Capt. Fred]

Yup, I trolled them meatless all the time with good success. Down here I'd be tempted to try it both ways.

[Prodigal Son]

Two years ago I went offshore as "capt" for the first time. I'd fished offshore with others and had been going on charters since I was a little kid, but never had I been the guy in charge and the one who 'knew' the most.

Long story short, we (me and two friends, neither of which had EVER been offshore) found ourselves in the gulf stream with no real ideas outside of what I 'knew' from my limited experience and what they read on the interweb.

So, lacking a plan, we just threw the kitchen sink at em. We managed a white, something that was big (billfish that took all our Penn 6/0 had and then some before throwing the hook) and a cooler of dolphin. We had regular sea witches with ballyhoo, naked hoo's and artificial's all mixed in our 7 line spread and then we took every other lure we had and made two chains out of them and cleated them off of either side of the boat as teasers (we literally had like 7 different lures just strung a foot or two apart on 300lb mono on each side).

Point of that story is two fold: 1.) we got back in and after reading the fishing reports for the day, we were one of the only boats out there that caught fish...probably just got lucky, but it could have been the fact that we weren't stuck in the "skirted hoo's and nothing but skirted hoo's" mentality.
2.) I still need to learn how to fish, because I have employed that same "f-it" strategy to setting a spread numerous times since then and haven't come up so lucky every time.

[Capt. Fred]

I've considered trying nothing but meatless lures for part of a season to see how I do. Just haven't had the guts to try it off of Hatteras yet. We do catch plenty of fish on the drone spoon, small (4") squid or chugger type lures, and on the green machine behind a bird. Often one of them produces the best fish of the day. So I guess that means one of two things: 1) Yup, lures work just fine south of the DMZ or 2) I suck at rigging ballyhoo.

I've been on several charters and I sure can't see any difference in how their ballys run compared to mine so who knows. I can see that their wake is WAY cleaner than the wake left by my boat.

[fishbard]

So we just need to get LC to come out with us sometime and see if we are doing something wrong. I don't really think there is anything wrong with your 'hoo rigging, suspect it is the wake as much as anything, since we sometimes do well compared to the fleet and we don't have real slow days unless most everybody is having a slow day.