When Fish Are There, But.....

[Chromaflage]

They don't seem to want to come up for a bite, what then?

After a trip out earlier this year and getting blanked, I've been pondering this a bit. I know that commercial boats have a knack for chumming tuna up from the depths into a feeding frenzie. So, I'm wondering what kind of magic sportboats can work when we know there are fish in the area, but are stubbornly staying at depth. Here are a couple thoughts I've had:

1. Locating them on the sonar. During the troll I can see them on my sonar, fairly close to the surface and can somewhat predict that we're gonna get bit when I see this. But if they're at depth, I'm wondering about the effectiveness of parking over the top of them and dropping iron down through them or even doing the yo-yo thing.

2. Do the same, but drop some live bait for chum and use a bit of weight on a line to drop a squiggly down to them.

3. Stop and start slapping the water or doing something to make a bunch of noise on the surface.

I don't know....any thoughts here? There are those days, as many of us have seen this year, where the fish just don't want to come up and bite trolled jigs. Other suggestions, comments?

[Irish Pennant]

No first hand experience but with the limited space I have on my boat I would/will be forced to jig deep and try to hook one. Reel it up and keep it on the hook just under the boat, toss out chunks of cut bait, then drop swim baits.

Or

Troll the kitchen sink, this didn't work very well for me the last time I tried it.

[onaga]

I think you were on the right track with Batman, Spoongebob and that Chicken thing.

[Chromaflage]

You know, my first mate would NEVER concede this, but during the Hammond OTC, we ran that rubber chicken the entire time. There was some grumbling about changing it out, but even though she didn't technically hook and land a fish, she was part of a spread that produced 33 quality fish that day. There may be more to it than just coincidence.

Originally Posted by onaga

I think you were on the right track with Batman, Spoongebob and that Chicken thing.

[Pilar]

Make locating fish priority #1 behind safety and watching out for your buddies. If you find the fish they will almost always give it up for you.

Trolling in a straight line looking for TUNA! heaven will only produce results sporadically. What I do is keep track of where I have made the big scene in the past. After doing this for a few years a pattern has emerged in the information I collected.

Fish like structure. Fish will return to structure and hang out there year after year. This year is different in that most of the structure at the 125 line is a huge dropoff from 200 to 500 fathoms or even deeper. I don't fish out there much because I can get them on the close in plan. So there is not as much info about 40 miles out in my treasure chest. In normal years the fish are often in at the 100 fathom line where there are lots of humps and bumps.

For what it is worth here is what I do on a hunt.

1) Pick an initial target based on recent reports, SST and Chloro and weather.

2) Go there with that in mind but be ready to change based on most recent info.

3) Underway be alert to anything which means fish are there. This can be birds, a blue water line or temp break. Sometimes even a single log floating can be a fish magnet and plug your boat.

4) Understand albacore behavior. They will return to the surface on about a one hour interval. Hanging around in an area that has gone cold can pay off big when they make another trip to the surface an hour later.

5) Absolutely resist driving over fish to get to the horizon.

and last the best advice I ever got is

6) Never leave biting fish. If you are getting bit and you think it is better somewhere else you are likely to lose the bet if you move.

Once I locate TUNA! I will set up a racetrack. Mark the initial contact point and cruise around the interesting area. Get hit again and mark a second spot. If this area is known to you then try to work the structure by driving over drop offs and other known locations. Trash lines on the surface often mark these good places. So then I just work back and forth between the marks in a meandering pattern. The fish come up and it's on. If you were to just drive by you might get hit but then you might miss it too.

Think like a fish ..........

[SamBen]

I just follow John when i see him

[fishboys]

Originally Posted by Pilar

Make locating fish priority #1 behind safety and watching out for your buddies. If you find the fish they will almost always give it up for you.

Trolling in a straight line looking for TUNA! heaven will only produce results sporadically. What I do is keep track of where I have made the big scene in the past. After doing this for a few years a pattern has emerged in the information I collected.

Fish like structure. Fish will return to structure and hang out there year after year. This year is different in that most of the structure at the 125 line is a huge dropoff from 200 to 500 fathoms or even deeper. I don't fish out there much because I can get them on the close in plan. So there is not as much info about 40 miles out in my treasure chest. In normal years the fish are often in at the 100 fathom line where there are lots of humps and bumps.

For what it is worth here is what I do on a hunt.

1) Pick an initial target based on recent reports, SST and Chloro and weather.

2) Go there with that in mind but be ready to change based on most recent info.

3) Underway be alert to anything which means fish are there. This can be birds, a blue water line or temp break. Sometimes even a single log floating can be a fish magnet and plug your boat.

4) Understand albacore behavior. They will return to the surface on about a one hour interval. Hanging around in an area that has gone cold can pay off big when they make another trip to the surface an hour later.

5) Absolutely resist driving over fish to get to the horizon.

and last the best advice I ever got is

6) Never leave biting fish. If you are getting bit and you think it is better somewhere else you are likely to lose the bet if you move.

Once I locate TUNA! I will set up a racetrack. Mark the initial contact point and cruise around the interesting area. Get hit again and mark a second spot. If this area is known to you then try to work the structure by driving over drop offs and other known locations. Trash lines on the surface often mark these good places. So then I just work back and forth between the marks in a meandering pattern. The fish come up and it's on. If you were to just drive by you might get hit but then you might miss it too.

Think like a fish ..........

The times I have fished with John this is what he does, just how he described it. Not sure if he mentioned chumming but it can sure help.

I do however feel everyone who goes out runs over the fish before deploying gear.

[cosmo]

Pull out an X-Rap 20....

Rapala's have a bad wrap on the charter boats down south. They don't like the trebles, and the old CD Mags with the metal bills would go out of tune and the anglers couldn't bring them back....so they'd string them out and wipe out the whole trolling rotation. so you don't hear much about them on the sport boats.

Last year on a 3-1/2 day, the whole fleet was on similar circumstances. Fish everywhere, but really scratchy bite. We strung out a single X-Rap 20 off the corner and stopped the boat 5 of 7 times that day, and brought a ton of fish over the rail following with live bait. The rest of the fleet got only a couple of stops per boat because they've beat the Rapala's out of their passengers.

If the fish don't want to come all the way to the surface, don't make them.

[TillamookChinook]

I did a bunch of internet research about tuna fishing in the Mediterranean a couple years ago. (Went to Barcelona, but didn't get to fish.) Anyhow, one of the things I saw mentioned was spraying the water surface with the spray hose. The thousands of droplets hitting the smooth water surface may look, from down deep, like small bait fish dimpling the surface and may bring the deep fish up.

TC

[blueriverjerry]

It takes a good bit of chum but the sport boats out of San Diego will spot fish on the sonar and lay out a chum line while making a fairly large (100yard??) circle over them. The idea supposedly is to create a spiral of sinking chum in the water column. Chunks will do as well as live for this purpose.

Jerry

[onaga]

In Hawaii when local commercial guys went after big tuna:

1) Found the porpoise.
2) Found the fish under the porpoise.
3) Sent a "palu", chum bag down.
4) Sent bait down on a hand line.
5) A couple fish at $5/lb = big money.

I think this could be modified for albacore.

[Fish-a-Holic]

I think Kerry's questions are more directed at when you can't get them on any type of trolling game...

I was with him the day he is alluding too when we got zippo. Absolutely not a single fish in the box. We did try spraying water on the surface, we also tried Rapala's fished both long and short underneath our spread. We tried swim baits. We tried Eat Me Lures both long and short. We tried Archer bars and both light and dark colors. Truly, they didn't really want to bite. There were 5 or 6 other boats out and the high boat of the day had like 4 fish, so it wasn't as if we were stinking it up while everyone was wacking them. The Ocean was incredibly rough so I think that could have had something to do with it.

To address the specific question about iron or live bait. I have seen the meter marks at 100 to 150 feet and dropped iron and hooked up, so it works. Of course on our boat this year that's a pipe dream with the wonderful sonar system we are running...it's in the works to change but...

I think dropping a livey down would also work in this situation. I have tried the circle with chum like Pilar suggests, and had it work as well. It does take some time to get them up sometimes, but it can work. I really think iron is the best answer in this situation, and once hooked start a liberal amount of chum over the side to bring them up and then try to convert in to a live bait stop.

Kerry, I have regretted since that day that we didn't start a slow drift (motors shut down) and begin brailing over chum and livey's. I think we would have eventually pulled the fish to us. Just turn the boat off and start sending small handfulls of chum over every minute or so. Within a decent amount of time I'm sure we would have had some tuna at the transom. It's day's like that when we realize sometime how much we depend on certain techniques, and you mentally chastise yourself back on the beach for not being more creative!!

[Pilar]

One of my favorite memories is a summer day wth Wthr4d and the Arkansas moonshine chef. We shut down and drifted, jigging fishtraps. After not too long a huge school of tiny fish filled up our shadow in the water. Not long after that you could see TUNA! zipping through it.

Once you stop making noise with the boat you become a large fish attractor.

[Slobes]

Wer were on a skinny bite a while back, and were talking about how to ditch the skunk and someone said "Drop the lines back" As I am feeding line w/ my hand, a fish hit! Got a couple cuts on my hand, but we also got a fish in the box. and as 1 of 4, it made me think that droppin the lines may help. So every now and then, just pop the boat into neutral for just long enough for the clones to sink, and sometimes thats enough to draw the strike.

[Reel Song]

For what its worth , Saturday we started getting singles but were seeing a lot of fish on the sonar, so we started dropping all of our tuna skins from thursday and friday in a 1/4 mile circle .( skins of 72 fish) by the time our chum was all out in the circle we were doing triples and quads one after another. another boat (ospray /cowboydave was in the mix) we left at 11:30 Plugged and they stayed there and caught 63. Maybe it was going to be a wide open bite anyway but I throw all my tuna hides in a five gallon bucket for that reason.

[skein]

Skein

[mitch]

Interesting chum technique. Has anyone had much luck with downriggers in those conditions?