Outriggers revisited [Archive]

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franks

03-16-2000, 12:42 AM

There was a thread about a month ago about the value (or lack therof) of running lures or baits from outriggers. I thought I'd add my two cents based on recent experience.

A couple of weeks ago I spent four days sailfishing off Cancun, Mexico. The fishing was spectacular, with boats catching as many as 40 sails in one day. We fished four lines, plus two teasers. One pair of lines was fished from the riggers, about 50-75 feet back. The other pair was fished from flatlines, about 15-20 feet behind the transom, and positioned just behind the teasers. We ran various teasers, including Ilander daisy chains and mullet dredges.

I would say that at least 80%, and maybe even 90% of our initial bites came on the rigger baits. We caught fish on the flatlines, but usually only after getting a bite on a rigger bait first.

To be fair, I've also seen the reverse, where almost all the bites came on flatlines or on pitch baits dropped back to fish following the teasers. Other days there doesn't seem to be any pattern at all.

Outriggers may not always get the most bites, but I sure wouldn't want to ditch them as "a waste of time."

josko

03-16-2000, 10:19 AM

We will definitely be paying a lot more attention to our outriggers this year. Last year we never menaged to 'tie together' the inside and outside spread. The 6 inside lines were very succesful, and if a lure was wrong or out of place, it was evdent pretty quickly. Since the outside seldom got hit, it was hard to improve. We'd just ease out some green machines, chuggers or somesuch 100'-150' back and hope for the best. Same with the shotgun lure, which at least got us a couple of good fish.
Perhaps the thing to try is to bring the outside riggers closer in and tie them in with the aftmost inside lures. Any ideas are welcome here. On the other hand, getting covered up with more than 6 rods would mean mayhem, at least.
I'd be very grateful for hints on how to (figuratively) tie the outside spread with the inside lines or for any hints on how to improve our success with outside lures

SteveK

03-16-2000, 11:18 AM

Here we go again.

Question 1) Is it possible that in clear Carribean waters
the fish, attracted by the wake disturbance just
see the outriggers sooner?

Question 2) Is it possible that up here in greener richer
waters they dive for the wake first and don't
see the lures/baits until they hit the wake

Question 3) If only fishing four to five lines (two guys per
boat), does it make sense to add outriggers to
all the chaos that (hopefully) erupts from time
to time..... esp. with lost time untangling lines
after several repeated hits.

I still think I'll leave the outriggers in the backyard this year, unless like Josko says, we have the time to play with different set ups this summer. I just doen't see the need...... unless you're running a charter and want maximum exposure.

franks

03-16-2000, 10:09 PM

It's certainly possible that the clear Caribbean waters had something to do with it. On the other hand, I've caught plenty of outrigger fish in dirty water in Florida, North Carolina, and New England. I guess I've never had the experience of outriggers being completely unproductive.

This isn't meant as a commentary, but I'm surprised that you guys find outriggers such a pain, and that you build spreads of 4-6 lures without using outriggers. On my boat we generally run two flatlines and everything else (including teasers) runs off the riggers. Using the riggers isn't a big deal - when we get where we're going we put the riggers down, let out the baits, clip them in, and run them up the halyards. Teaser lines are permanently attached, with teaser reels on the bridge. If anything, I'd say that outriggers reduce the chaos of tangled lines by keeping them spread apart.

Josko, I know your boat is a center console. I have to admit I know nothing about how outriggers are typically set up on such boats. Is your outrigger setup somehow more complicated or more difficult to deal with than mine?

I guess my likelihood of catching non-outrigger fish is limited because we only ever run two baits/lures that aren't clipped to an outrigger, so maybe my experience isn't directly relevant.

josko

03-16-2000, 11:02 PM

Frank,

we ran long rigger lures dutifully all 25 or 30 times we went offshore last summer. It's just that we never caught anything on them, so had no point from which to start tweaking the setup. We'd run two diving plugs under the boat, followed by cedar plug chains, followed by feather chains or jet-heads. Worked great! no complaints there.
On the outside we'd run green machines, large chuggers with or without birds. It wasn't a pain, just never caught anything.

I like to fish in order to learn how to catch fish better, not in order to catch fish, so things like this intrigue me to no end. I know it's doable and there is a solution that works, we just haven't found it yet. I've been canvassing all I can to get some starting pointers for the outside spread next summer. Once we START to catch fish with them, we'll tweak them up - we just haven't got to that point yet.

Suggestions I plan to try include shortening up so lures ride on the boat wake, matching up long rigger lures to bars/chains running on short rigger, and running bars from them. Any other suggestions welcome. I just know there's a productive way to rig them up, and that's the fun of it.

backman

03-17-2000, 07:10 AM

Frank:
 
geometry limits the CC's rigger spread.  Josko's Regulator is an 8'6" beam; the riggers are either 17 or 18' long, mounted perhaps 1' inside the gunwale and go out at perhaps a 45 degree angle at most.
My eyeball guess last summer was the total width of the spread was less than 20' wide.   While we did run 2 lines off the rigger the inside line on the riggers had to be watched carefully in the turn or it would snag with one of the middle lines in nthe spread.
 
However my reaction to nothing happening was to constantly bump the long lines further back which as I think we're starting to realize; borke the pattern into a big boat wake and 6 small lures chasing it and 3 long lures way the hell out there, completely divorced from the rest of the spread.
 
I think our magic this summer is going to be figuring out how to tie the long spread to the inside spread so it makes a single integrated pattern.   All the 'mag's say the same thing - build the pattern up so its a single related spread with lots of action all tied together to look like a school of bait.
Josko - I think if we pull in the 2 riggers closer we can get away w/ the turns if we lose the shotgun line.  Thats the one that tangled the most which led to me bumping it further back making the long pattern too far out.