Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2015 i Sport Fishing

Before you go fishing this weekend, don’t forget to stop at the tackle shop to pick up some half-ounce lead-heads, a couple of top water lures, and a tub of Gulp! tails. Oh yeah, and a couple of drones. Apparently, some legislators in states such as Oregon, Illinois and North Carolina fear that scenario, since they’re promoting or considering legislation that would make it illegal to use a drone in any way for hunting and fishing. Granted, for most anglers, such laws would hardly matter. Few of us have drones, aka unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and few of us are likely to get them. But has such a thing crossed my mind? You bet. When I’m sitting in a broad expanse of Southern marsh unable to see beyond the spartina…

High-speed reels don’t produce much heat, but they do impart massive amounts of strain on the main drive and pinion gears. A harder material produces a longer-lasting gear, but that harder metal affects the smoothness of a reel. Brass is the most common gear material in baitcasting reels, though aluminum and stainless are also used. Zinc is the most common in spinning reels, again with aluminum and stainless as options. Stainless steel is most common in conventional reels. Each metal has a disadvantage. Aluminum gears are super light, though they don’t take abuse well. Brass is stronger, but it’s not as strong as stainless steel. Stainless is the strongest, but it does lack smoothness. Still, all these different gears can work well, contingent on the species targeted. “I would hesitate…

FACEBOOK FAN POLL Like us Q: What’s the longest period you or anyone on your boat has fought one fish? I’m always hoping for a knock-down, drag-out brawl, so I keep fishing! — Daniel K. Carr One hour on an 18-pound spinning rod. I couldn’t raise my arms to wash my hair in the shower. — Michael Richmond Two-and-a-half hours fighting an 85-pound yellowfin tuna on 15-pound mono off La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico. — Dave Breiter Five hours against an 8-foot bull shark on a Penn 308 with 30-pound-test. It took a skipjack we drifted for king mackerel. My friend’s 11-year-old son stayed on it the whole time. — John Scroggins One hour and 25 minutes before the giant sturgeon snapped my line. — Bruce Click My grandfather,…

CAPT. RICHARD ANDREWS FISHES THE WEST SIDE of North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound near the mouth of the Pamlico River from the small historic town of Bath. According to the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, Bath was the first incorporated town in the state (1705), and home to Blackbeard the pirate and the oldest church in North Carolina. Anglers can find accommodations such hotels and bed-and-breakfasts in nearby Washington (which claims to be the first city named after the president). Bath and Belhaven feature waterfront condos and efficiencies available for nightly rentals. US Airways flies to the Pitt-Greenville airport, 36 miles away. If you’re driving to the sound, Bath is about 75 miles east of Interstate 95. Andrews launches his boat at ramps downriver from Bath. Contact him at Tar-Pam…

“We had spotted a huge school of big red drum,” recalls Capt. Pat Foster, who operates out of Virginia Beach, “with a half-dozen cobia mixed in.” Foster wanted to pull the cobia out of the redfish melee. “So we bridled a live menhaden and cast it in front of the cobia.” That allowed Foster’s angler to keep the bait on the surface and pull it away from aggressive reds. “And cobia can’t resist a live bunker,” Foster says. MENHADEN BRIDLING Fishing with live pogies has other advantages for cobia and red drum anglers fishing off Virginia Beach. “They’re free,” Foster adds, “and many times the fish are zeroed in on fat-back, as menhaden are called locally.” He catches menhaden with a 12-foot cast net featuring three-quarter-inch mesh and one-and-a-half pounds…

Along the coast of Southern California and Baja, including Cabo San Lucas, offshore anglers like to sight-cast (pitch) live baits to striped marlin when these billfish are feeding or tailing near the surface. Lobbing heavy baits such as Pacific mackerel (greenies) or big-eye scads (caballitos) as far as 150 feet places extra stress on a bridle. To deal with that, top fishermen in these waters have found ways to create the strongest bridle rigs possible. “For casting live baits, we usually bridle them through the eye sockets or just behind the head where the gill flaps end near the top of the dorsal area,” says AFTCO’s Greg Stotesbury, whose consistent success with marlin has earned him the respect of anglers across the country. Stotesbury likes the technique of bridling in…

FLORIDA “Double D Charters”- Miami – Sport Fishing. Specializing in offshore live baiting, trolling, kite fishing for sailfish, swordfish, tarpon, wahoo, dolphin, marlin and much more! Capt. Dean Panos (954) 805-8231 www.doubledcharters.com. Bouncer’s Dusky 33! – Swordfi s h , sailfish, tarpon and all the rest. (305) 439-2475 or captbouncer@bellsouth.net Over 40 years experience FLORIDA KEYS KEY WEST – 43’ Custom Torres “SOUTHPAW” with capt. Brad Simonds. Tuna Tower, superb electronics, huge uncluttered cockpit. Light tackle & live bait. 305-393-2306 - www.southpawfishingkeywest.com BERMUDA Mako Charters now offer fishing and accommodations packages! www.fishbermuda.com or Email: makocharters@gmail.com, Capt. Allen DeSilva Cell# 441-505-8626 COSTA RICA “COSTA RICA DREAM MAKERS” Sport Fishing Packages at the Los Suenos Resort & Marina WBS Championship winning boat charters, Luxury rooms, Condos, and Houses. Call us toll free…

When it comes to water movement, fish want to conserve energy. WHILE CROSSING of a pre-fish to-do list chock-full of packing, rigging and loading, too many anglers are laissez faire about checking the tides. That’s a big blunder: Don’t expect positive results at your favorite flat during the wrong tidal stage. Exploiting local tides and currents is essential to strategize the day’s fishing, which could be a key dif erence between catching or going for a boat ride. It takes little time to check tide tables online or on a phone app. The gravitational pull of the moon and sun drives tides, forcing water up or down over a period of the time. Low tides reveal structure such as jetty rocks, sea grass, pilings and oyster beds; high tides flood…

1. PROPERLY PROTECTED Shimano placed heavy emphasis on corrosion resistance with these newly designed Torium star-drag reels, using an in-house treatment process and adding durability with nonflexing aluminum side plates and a cold-forged aluminum spool. The Torium A reels also feature High Efficiency Gearing and a 6.2-to-1 gear ratio capable of retrieving 46 inches of line per crank. Cross Carbon drag washers and antirust bearings add smoothness. Offered currently in three sizes — for 50- to 80-pound braid or 15- to 40-pound mono — Torium A’s cost $229.99 to $249.99. 2. TIMES TWO Berkley’s Gulp! and Gulp! Alive! Doubletails draw on the proven designs of the company’s swimming mullet and minnow grub. Doubletails’ twin appendages move erratically when the bait is retrieved at any speed. Available in 3- and 4-inch…

MOST ANGLERS DON’T NEED ANY HELP GETTING FIRED UP TO CATCH FISH. But with bragging rights and a boatload of money on the line, a ho-hum fishing trip can transform into an amped-up adventure to remember. Most of us have fished at least a few tournaments over the years, be they family-friendly inshore competitions or big-money offshore spectacles. Yet most of us also know very little about the long and storied history of such contests. Here are a few questions to test your tourney IQ. 1. WHEN WAS THE PRO-TOUR PORTION OF THE SOUTHERN KINGFISH ASSOCIATION OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED? Anglers have been live-baiting for king mackerel along the Southeast and Gulf coasts for generations. But it wasn’t until the early 1990s that the rise of the Southern Kingfish Association blew the…

• North Carolina limits recreational anglers to one redfish a day in state waters. • The slot size for legal fish is 18 to 27 inches total length. • It’s unlawful to possess a redfish in federal waters (3 to 200 miles from shore). • According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, no directed commercial fishery exists for Atlantic red drum, although fish are landed as bycatch in several states, predominantly North Carolina. The annual catch — taken mostly by gill nets — is restricted by quota and a daily limit. Harvest and sale in New Jersey through Virginia is restricted to recreational bag limits. • Along the Gulf Coast, commercial harvest is prohibited in all states except Mississippi, according to the University of Southern Mississippi. That commercial catch…

Borrowing a page from offshore rigging, Capt. Bouncer Smith — a nationally respected longtime Miami charter skipper — bridles inshore live baits for tarpon, snook and even trout. Why bridle? Simple: It’s easy to do (taking about 20 seconds), and baits stay healthy and more seductive when not impaled on a hook. But more important, Smith has found that when he bridles with a circle hook, he lands well over 80 percent of the 100-plus-pound tarpon he jumps. The ratio is even better for snook. That’s because the hook is fully exposed and more likely to find purchase without obstruction in a big bait. Additionally, the circle hook’s tendency to land in a tarpon’s jaw reduces leader wear, allowing Smith to boldly drop to 50-pound leaders for all his tarpon…

Power versus speed — it’s the main factor conceded when fishing high-speed reels. An angler loses the extra cranking power of lower-gear reels, but gains the ability to keep up with fast-moving fish that cause slack in line, species like bonefish, redfish, kingfish and blackfin tuna. “Fighting heavy fish, such as big tuna and grouper, is easier at lower speeds,” says Brandon Cotton, Okuma’s marketing manager. “With big fish, it takes more effort to turn that handle on a higher-speed reel. Think of pedaling a 10-speed bike; lower gears are much easier to pedal than higher gears.” High-speed reels excel in many on-the-water scenarios. “Plenty of artificial lures work best only when retrieved at very high speeds,” points out Steve Carson, director of Penn Fishing University. “Wahoo and jacks, in…

A rigorous 40-minute battle was required to defeat a GT of frightening proportions. Manfred Schmidt caught the 156½-pound giant trevally [A] while trolling bait off Watamu, Kenya, this past November. If approved, it will defeat a 124-pound, 12-ounce GT caught off Tanzania in 2011, and become the new 50-pound men’s record. A 28-pound, 13-ounce tautog [B], if approved, will replace the 25-pounder (Ocean City, New Jersey) that’s been the all-tackle record since 1998. Angler Kenneth Westerfield of College Point, New York, caught the monsta tog this past January off Ocean City, Maryland, fishing a crab. Samson fish are in the same group of jacks as yellowtails and amberjack, and of course are powerful, stubborn fighters. Surprisingly, angler Nicholas Lorenz of Daglish, Australia, bested a 65-pound, 7-ounce samson fish [C] in…

To catch giant black marlin off Cairns, Australia, there’s no better bait than a live tuna. But if you’re thinking a 2-pound skipjack, think again. There are few limitations on the size of your live bait here; skippers often rig yellowfin or other tunas in the 20- to 30-pound range (a nice snack to a 1,000-pound marlin). A rig consisting of a 28-foot, 700-pound monofilament trace connected to a 20/0 Mustad circle hook is preferred. For the bridle, tie both ends of a length of 130-pound Dacron line securely to the hook to form a 6-inch loop. Use a long, blunt bait needle with a hook on the end to connect to the bridle, then pull it through the tuna’s head. When you catch a tuna you’ll use as a…

Most anglers know the thrill of capturing a high-intensity blue marlin fight or a dogged-anddirty bluefin battle on video. Who hasn’t seen stunning GoPro, VIRB or Water Wolf footage? But we — as anglers and captains — have other, less-touted yet highly valuable marine cameras besides those wide-angle action shooters. Thermal, low-light and visible-light cameras abet safe navigation, offer security monitoring and underwater viewing; some even shoot fishing action. Here’s a look at several non-POV cameras and some thoughts on how anglers can use them. THERMAL AND LOW-LIGHT A hands-down leader in this space, FLIR Systems designs a wide breadth of products for recreational fishing and boating while also dominating military, scientific, and commercial fields. Marine offerings include fixed mount — MD- and M-Series cameras, including the brand-new M400 —…

Nonskid soles — decks that enhance traction to minimize slips and tumbles, especially when wet — come in various iterations on saltwater fishing boats, including traditional teak and molded-fiberglass diamond or grit patterns. Yet in recent years, new synthetic materials have emerged. Among the most popular with boating anglers is textured, closed-cell EVA foam, which provides traction that equals or surpasses that of traditional decks, wet or dry, as well as cushioning to mitigate fatigue and sore muscles during long days on the water. Available in a variety of shades and multitone treatments, this lightweight stain-resistant material can also add a touch of color to match your boat’s interior and/or upholstery. You can also have it engraved with special designs such as your boat’s name. Companies such as OceanGrip and…