Thus was the game the last few days which really made it tough for a lot of boats, especially those who stuck to the usually very productive troll programs.
Fish were jumping everywhere, but didn't seem to want to eat out of the troll spread, and seemed to disappear as soon as you got within 100yd of them.
On my boat, we got them by slow rolling up to the school. If they were still there when we made it within casting range, we'd cast small (40-80g) jigs as far as we could and twitch on the retrieve. It was solidly effective, but definitely made it tough to do more than sniping one, maybe two each siting.
It was suggested on iFish to troll really small swimbaits super slow near the jumpers if you want to stay on the troll... but that doesn't really seem to be up my alley.
The fish we were gutting onboard were loaded with tiny saury ( like 2" long). They seemed to be crushing on them, then would disappear and pop up a few hundred yards away. Seemingly mowing through a school of saury then busting on the next one. Which would explain why they'd seemingly disappear before we were close enough to spook them... but other times they'd disappear, re-appear a few hundred yards away, then be right off our bow 20sec later. Just really, really on the move.
Since this was a constant theme over a few day period, I think it's worth noting for future days like that for all of us. I'm sure those who like to do things on the fly would have an easier time getting the right size offering out there. I certainly thought about putting the 12wt behind the boat in the spread, but neither of my crew wanted to fight a 25lb+ albacore on a fly rod.
Any thoughts or experiences from the rest of the crew here?
Fish were jumping everywhere, but didn't seem to want to eat out of the troll spread, and seemed to disappear as soon as you got within 100yd of them.
On my boat, we got them by slow rolling up to the school. If they were still there when we made it within casting range, we'd cast small (40-80g) jigs as far as we could and twitch on the retrieve. It was solidly effective, but definitely made it tough to do more than sniping one, maybe two each siting.
It was suggested on iFish to troll really small swimbaits super slow near the jumpers if you want to stay on the troll... but that doesn't really seem to be up my alley.
The fish we were gutting onboard were loaded with tiny saury ( like 2" long). They seemed to be crushing on them, then would disappear and pop up a few hundred yards away. Seemingly mowing through a school of saury then busting on the next one. Which would explain why they'd seemingly disappear before we were close enough to spook them... but other times they'd disappear, re-appear a few hundred yards away, then be right off our bow 20sec later. Just really, really on the move.
Since this was a constant theme over a few day period, I think it's worth noting for future days like that for all of us. I'm sure those who like to do things on the fly would have an easier time getting the right size offering out there. I certainly thought about putting the 12wt behind the boat in the spread, but neither of my crew wanted to fight a 25lb+ albacore on a fly rod.
Any thoughts or experiences from the rest of the crew here?