Bites versus Shots
While steaming home from our last trip to the Wanganella’s, I promised myself that I was going to experiment more with tackle and techniques, with the number of fish we were seeing daily, it was the perfect place. I also wanted to do an accurate survey of bites on lures and shots on teasers versus caught fish, and which technique would prove to be better and when.
Due to the unpredictability of marlin, especially striped marlin the only way to keep all the variables equal was to set the boat up with teasers on one side and lures on the other. This way, both techniques saw the same action. I.e. same bite time, location and lures. So the right side became the teasers and left the lures.
Every fish that bit a lure and pulled line out was ticked up as a bite and every fish that was raised on the teasers was ticked up as a shot. What has to be remembered is that every time a marlin grabs hold of a lure, the fish is trying to eat the lure and we are relying on the marlin to hook itself up. If the fish fails, more often then not the fish will return and try to hook itself up two, three or four times, may be even more times until finally hooking itself up or loosing interest and swimming away. These attempts to eat the lure must all be counted as bites. Most fishermen will forget to calculate this, because, lets face it, it makes us look like bad fishermen.
A couple of years ago while fishing with some mates on another boat, the skipper was comparing the poor success of another boat and his preferred method of towing teasers. I was told that this boat had released 2 fish from 11 shots, and while that was obviously poor fishing, I can’t remember exactly what the skipper said, but in wasn’t encouraging. However while discussing this, I recalled our tally for the day of 2 fished released from 4 fish raised, now is that 2 fish from 4 bites? Because that’s what we were so proud of, not likely. Out of the 4 fished raised our skipper had forgotten to count that 3 of those fish had bitten a lure 3 times each! And the 4th had tried to hook itself up twice. So in short, that day, the boat we were on had a tally of 2 fished released from 11 bites. Go figure?
The 1st afternoon we released 8 fish, but no survey was conducted.
Here are the results.
Day Bites Releases Shots Switched Releases
1 29 1 23 14 8
2 18 6 17 12 7
3 14 4 10 8 4
4 15 2 12 8 4
5 11 3 15 10 5
6 21 6 19 15 4
Totals108 22 96 67 32
20% 47% 33%
We caught 20% of the bites on our lures.
We caught 33% of the shots on our teasers.
We caught 47% of the fish that we switched.
We estimated we raised 136 fish.
The ‘switched’ fish collum represents a fish that we successfully switched to a bait which then proceeded to eat the bait. So by subtracting releases from switched, you get ‘missed’ fish or fish we failed to hook up on our baits.
Variables
Weather
Moon phase
Lures and rig
Angler skill
‘Mood’ of marlin
Morning/afternoon
Pack attacks
Bait rigs
Fresh Bait
Abundance of bait
Large Japanese surface liner??
The weather remained constant, with the wind never over 15knts.
Each side received similar bites and our lures were rigged the same as normal. Last year we seemed to have an exceptional lure hook up, but these results are crap!
The pack attacks were difficult. When we had 2 fish on the teasers the second fish on the rigger very nearly never switched over. Also the slowing of the boat effected the lures, however the fish still ate them.
We changed our bait rigs through out trying to get a better hook up, on the last day, we failed miserably!
Fresh bait would have improved our hook up on our switched fish.
On the 1st afternoon there was very little bait and the fish were aggressive and we went 4 from 6 bites on our lures, also on the last day in the afternoon we did better then normal on the lures, also with little bait.
The surface liner set his line on the 2nd night and then left again on the 5th day.
Bait and switch fishing is my favourite method of fishing. It brings the angler back into the game, it is a very visual way of catching marlin, more often then not it enables the fish to be caught quickly making the most out of the bite and the fish benefits from a quick release. It also involves team work which is a very satisfying aspect for me my crew and that of my owner and guests. The down side is that it is not as easy as fishing with lures. So with that in mind I encourage everyone to have a go! Its great fun!
Comments, opinions and ideas are welcome, email me at Ultimatelady@attglobal.net.
GOOD FISHING. Tom |
