Albacore Basics with Del Stephens Part 1

hello i'm del stevens some of you know me as the tuna dog today we're going to talk about albacore basics this is the first of a four-part tuna seminars for the seattle boat show today is just going to be on albacore basics talk about some of the trolling talk about some of the other techniques talk about where and how to find tuna in the northwest off the waters of oregon in washington i ran charter for over 25 years haven't done it a number of years but i'm still sponsored by a number of companies so i will show their products from time to time and i use a lot of the products that i talk about even though i'm not sponsored by some people best boat i've ever owned 34 hydra sport with triple 300 verados on the back great riding boat great fishing very fishy boat some of the sponsors that that i fish their products rapala onyx mercury jay brade costa iowa garmin gamagatsu all those you see on here albacore our albacore come across from japan in a counterclockwise rotation counterclockwise they come across north of the san francisco bay area right up the coastline follow the warm water up into oregon washington and later in the season they'll make it into southeast alaska and then back around and when they get to five to seven years old they migrate down into the south pacific and that's where they stay and they spawn the albacore that come across that you see in california come across slightly south the bay area and they migrate in a clockwise rotation we never see those fish those fish never come up into our waters our fish never go down into their waters we do however see giant bluefin tuna we also see some dorado yellowtail and occasionally a marlin up in our waters when the water gets warm enough our fish are three to four year old they're immature early in the season they'll be 15 to 20 pounds later in the season and what i mean by late is september october they'll be pushing 30 to 40 pounds it's not uncommon to catch 35 pound fish in september a mature fish is 75 to 100 pounds but we never see those once it's rare for us to see a fish 40 pounds or greater those are five-year-old fish and they're in the south pacific these fish do not have bladders tuna are constantly coasting down swimming up coasting down swimming up they have to constantly be moving to get air across their gills and to live they're feeding machines they can eat up 25 of their body weight in one day you get them in a feeding frenzy and they'll gorge themselves an hour later they could be feeding again in oregon we're allowed 25 fish per person in washington they have no limit 25 fish per person as a limit is a lot most boats don't have the storage space if you had four guys on board that's 100 fish i wouldn't want to take care of 100 fish we'd want to take care of 50 fish which i've had to deal with a number of times no limit on the rods but as many as you can handle out some days uh you can get away with that other days when the bite's hot you barely want to have four or five rods out where do you find them i used to talk about how water temperature was the key to finding albacore but i want you to focus on food food is the key water temperature is secondary to food if you think in terms of food and i'm going to take you through how that translates with chlorophyll water temperature and blue water you'll understand that by the time we get done so food is the key water temperature being secondary 58 to 62 degrees is what we prefer when the water gets up 63 64 degrees they're still here but a lot of times they'll move down they may not be on the surface they'll be down in a thermocline typically 40 to 70 feet down you want to look for upwellings temperature breaks maybe birds work in the water birds hitting the water or possibly birds on the water maybe the tuna have fed and now the birds are just sitting on the water uh waiting for the tuna to come back and feed again so obviously fish jumping august september a lot of times you'll see a jumper that's a good sign that they're there and when there's one there's normally a lot most of the time blue water green water breaks it's rare to see it but once in a while when you're running offshore you'll go from green water and it'll look like somebody took a marker and put blue water and you went right into it most of the time it's a transition that we're going from green dirty water running offshore the farther we get the cleaner it gets and then pretty soon you'll start seeing blue water back there and hopefully as you're running offshore you're watching the temperature and you want to look for 58 degree water but you want to look for a temperature break a significant break like quarter to half a degree within quarter to half a mile if you get a break like that stop look see what kind of water you have you may not be in blue water but you could be in clean green water that clean green water could be pretty close to a transition into blue water maybe put your gear out and check it out try it for a little bit you never know a lot of times they'll just be inside that they'll move in and out of that they love fresh blue water but they'll move in and out of that green water because there's more food in that green water so so don't run past it cover a lot of water run with with a buddy maybe a couple of you help each other out on the radio if one of you finds it call the others in so make sure you're in an area that has fish are you fishing in an area known for catching fish if you look at my chart plotter i've got clusters of spots i have marked where i've caught fish the ocean is very much like a steelhead stream or a lake in the fact that the bottom of that ocean will dictate a lot of times where currents are coming through water's coming up a sea mound pushing up wellings up things like that those places are where you're going to find bait being pushed or trapped and a lot of times those places are where you're going to catch fish on a consistent basis so if you don't have anything to go by go back to where you've caught fish before that's always a good indication is it a donaire for catching fish yeah on those clusters there are certain areas that hold fish off of newport we have tuna town and well-known area it's an area it's not just it's not just coordinates it's a little bit bigger area than that do you have any recent reliable reports have you heard from anyone reliable is the key phrase here is it somebody you trust or is it just hearsay so that's the important thing don't chase radio fish fish your style if you hear somebody on the radio and they're 15 to 20 miles away and they got a hot bike going by the time you pick your gear up and run to that and everybody else does too that bite will be over with most of the time so learn to fish your style learn how to find fish on your own and you'll be better off birds jumpers temperature breaks maybe there's no sea life out there maybe you haven't seen any birds you haven't seen a significant temperature break and there hasn't been any transition from green water to blue water if there's no sea life out there chances are there's no tuna there either these are highly migratory species so and then lastly did you check the sea surface and chlorophyll charts for 99 you can subscribe online to get the chlorophyll and the sea temperatures off of a web-based service so you know you can do that you can also get it through sirius xm through their fish mapping or just through their uh their sea temps you get out there there's a lot of boats maybe you heard a reliable report that said there was a lot of boats and there's a lot of fish if you run offshore and you get out there and there's a lot of boats out there in one area most of the time you're not going to catch fish if you're trolling it's because the boat wash and the prop wash with a lot of boats will drive the fish down and if you don't know how to go down and get them with iron you're probably not going to have a successful day at that point you need to go find your own place to fish i was fishing offshore one time in a spot where there was a lot of boats and there was a reliable report fish had been caught there a couple of days earlier one of my crew members said hey let's go fish this spot he brought a couple of his friends that he worked with we ran out there we trolled around for about an hour changed gear changed directions trolling changed the gear some more two hours into that and having changed gear numerous times and changed directions and changed speed we had not caught a fish most of the boats around us had not caught a fish everybody's on the radio if everybody's on the radio they're not catching fish because when you're catching fish you don't have time to talk on the radio after two hours i said pull the gear we pulled the gear we ran about 20 miles to the south to a spot i had fish three or four days earlier put the gear in the water went to trolling boom start hooking fish immediately we were the only boat in sight for hours and hours we went found our own spot went back to a spot i'd caught fish and started catching fish so keep that in mind if if you're running offshore to a spot that has a lot of boats in it you're probably not going to be very successful if there's a lot of boats there trolling we talked about sea service temperature charts this this is terrafan and for 99 a year you can subscribe to it this is a sea surface temperature chart from august 24 2009 there's the columbia river willapa bay up here and your quina bay down here and this is a temperature chart over here it's 59 degrees right there i said we're looking for 58 to 62 degrees you can see that we have that in pretty close and here's some contour lines there's the astoria canyon and you can see by this temperature in here then it's 61 62 degrees right in here you can see green water here 60 degrees blue water back in here colder water we're looking for that significant jump this area right in here is is very fishy known to catch fish it's 46 10 on the north number and we're 124 40 right there 40 16 120 4440 off the astoria canyon this whole area is very efficient you can see there's a lighter area right here if i was running out there i'd want to see if there's a pretty good jump between this and that warmer water right here which looks like it's 63-64 degrees so that would give you an indication of possibly a temperature break right there or maybe back even closer back in here between the green or the blue and the green that's in pretty close here is a chlorophyll shot from the same day and you can see the blue water out here in this the green is heavier chlorophyll count and you can see in the same area there's a break in the chlorophyll remember we were talking about right back in there being the temperature break right there okay if i was going to run offshore this is probably where i would start is right in there and that's what you're looking for is that type of a break between chlorophyll and blue water and this is green and this is blue water okay there's your columbia river again and you can see it's even higher chlorophyll count and closer in that dirtier water this is off the sea surface temperatures using my using my serious exam on my garmin equipment and with that you can see the sea surface temperatures and you can see my chrome trails where i was fishing and you can see the water temperature up here on the side and this spot where i put my finger is the coordinates of where i put my finger so it's 4604 on the north and 124 53 to the west and you can see right in here is a pretty good temperature break between the blue water this colder water and the warmer water and you can see i've been fishing there quite a bit this year so if you touch that screen it'll give you the coordinates it'll tell you how far it is to that spot from where you're currently at and i was sitting at the dock in el waka when i did this so it's available through sirius xm here's something else you can get the wave action the wind and it'll give you the the dis the duration between the swells the wind and the duration tell you how the period how big a ocean you have out there i can sit at the dock and i can see what it is before i run out there there's my chrome trail again most people start albacore fishing by learning how to troll and for trolling gear you're going to want a stiff rod somewhere five foot six to six six seven foot the length of the rod isn't so critical it preferably should have a stiff tip to it because on windy sporty days if you have a soft tip your lure back there will be popping in the surface whereas a stiff tip will help keep that down help prevent that you want an open face reel that does not have a line guide to it and that can hold about 300 yards of 40 to 65 pound braid i use the j braid i like it it works really well you want to put a good quality test rated swivel on if you go in and buy the swivels from the bulk bins and tie one of those on you're going to be sadly disappointed and albacore is going to stretch that thing apart and then maybe put a monofilament top shot on top of your braid it works as a shock absorber but you can also put different rods with different links top shots and that also helps to indicate how far out you are when you're putting it out the spread out you can use hand lines which are 300 pound blue cord and you can make them various lengths 30 to 70 feet and secure them to something on the boat they should have a bungee hook to them to absorb that shock on that strike and when a fish hits one of those your hand line is down you look back your hand line is trolling on the surface and when it goes down there's a tuna on it you don't even have to stop the boat you can just pull it in by hand and then take the fish off of it throw it right back out and you're back to trolling again and for troll gear what you want is you want a rod that's anywhere from five foot six to seven foot the length of the rod is not the critical component what is critical though is that i have a stiff tip that way on days when it's a sporty ocean or you've got some pretty good swells your lures are not popping through the surface like they would be with a soft tip rod so you also want a open face reel line guides on reels typically get burned out on the first run of an albacore and most reels can't handle that blistering run of peeling line off the rail this is a size 40 diowa saltist lever drag two speed do you need a two speed no the new star drag size 40s are perfect single speed would work just fine you don't need a two-speed reel for for albacore tuna you could use it for something else if you wanted to but that's fine needs to hold three 400 yards of 40 to 65 pound braid topped off with some type of bumper and on this one i've got a bumper of monofilament hive is green so that way i can see it back there some people will make their bumper the length of how far they want to put their lure out so if they're putting it out 45 feet maybe this rod has a 45 foot bumper and when i mentioned bumper this monofilament's got a lot of stretch to it as opposed to the braid and it gives a little bit of shock absorber to that rod so that way there's not a just a severe jolt when that tuna hits so you need a good swivel test rated swivel and i use a test rated swivel that's easy disconnect on and off works really well i put a bead on the end here so that when people are cranking they don't pull that swivel up through the guide because these reels have a lot more more torque to them you can pull your swivel right through that guide and tear the guides out fairly easily one of the other things that people use when they first start now is they'll start out with hand lines we sometimes call it blue cord and i put my hand lines on electrical cord holder so you've got a swivel at the end of the blue cord you've got a bungee clear at the other end a lot of guys will make these at different lengths maybe a 30 foot hand line maybe another set at 45 might be another set of 60 feet a lot of guys like to fish their hand lines and when you fish a hand line you just attach it to something that's mounted very stoutly to the boat or they'll rip it off and which is why the bungee's on here as well something like a cleat put it out back put your lure on the end of this swivel and when they and it'll be trolling along on the surface and when they hit you'll look back and your hand line will be down and just pull that fish in unhook it put your lure right back out where it was at and you're back to fishing you don't even have to stop the boat unless you want to when we talk about what albacore feed on we look at oregon and washington and northern california and the top five things in oregon number one is midwater shrimp and that is consistently number one for years and years and years and i've confirmed that with marine sciences from oregon state university anchovies number two squid is number three blue lantern fish number four and asari is number five when you look at a mid-water shrimp he's got a little bit of pink a little bit of silvery blue to him the squid kind of a pearl white the sari is real long and slender looks like a herring that's been stretched out and then your blue lantern fish basically a bottom fish and then your anchovy for so when you're looking for lures that mimic or imitate those you want to try to find things and most of the time when i'm trolling or fishing something that's pink and silver is because it looks like a mid-water shrimp trolling lures you've got a lot of variety of things to choose from from for trolling lures the most common one are clones and with that you've got ballyhood williamson the zookers eat me lures and the seven strand lures if you can find them if they're still around diving lures you have yozuri's rapalas braid runners and then for cedar plugs you've got plain wood cedar plugs there's other colors of them plain wood catches most fish so daisy chains that's a string of lures tied together there's a daisy chain right there it's a string of squids about five to six feet long and the guy on the back has a hook on it it's the only one with the hook and the tuna is going to eat that guy he's the slow pulp we're going to get him here's your zuker feather do not troll a zucker feather after about the 15th of august their feeding habits change a little bit conditions change and they're not as apt to hit a feather as they are hitting something like a this is a clone this is a broom tail and then here's your cedar plugs you can see that they come in various sizes your six inch cedar plug is the most common one purple black and cedar plug is probably the next most common cedar plug that catches fish and then there's a lot of other colors if you want to try them there's a williamson speed pro it's similar to arapla this one is self-tuning if you catch a fish you can put it back out you don't have to try to tune the bill on it and most of the time i take the belly hook off the back one's going to catch the fish the belly hook is going to catch you while that thing's flopping around on the boat if you're not careful pretty dangerous but uh and then here is a jet it's got holes in the front of it up here it comes through the water and water creates a bubble trowel behind it and that's why they call it a jet so for colors a lot of times people will fish light colors on bright days dark colors on dark days or with cloud cover when i researched color concepts when i wrote my book the dark side what i found was that most of us guys who had been fishing for years and years and years we have colors that we prefer we have colors that we're confident to catch fish and most days that's what we put out for me that's pink and white for somebody else that might be mexican flag but for the most part fish what you're confident in catching fish with you'll be happier and you will catch fish with them if somebody over here 500 yards away is catching fish on mexican flag and you had mexican flag out you can't catch a fish on that don't worry about it try something different maybe zucchini or some other color there's four main colors that i fish for me pink and white zucchini mexican flag purple black if i'm gonna troll those one of those four colors i'm probably gonna have pink and white out first and then maybe zucchini if it's a troll show i'm probably gonna catch him on one of those two this is a teaser and this happens to be a spreader bar and i like to fish the archer bars because they're plastic and they've got a swivel right here that i can hook a lure on to trail it and a tees are made to simulate a school of bait spreader bars the archer bars are the most common uh albie bars are made by albert da silva locally here in the northwest in washington and you can't get an archer bar anymore since fred archer died and his company's kind of folded up so alby bars are what you want to try to use they're plastic they won't scratch the side of the boat you let them out in the water and with the current moving from the boat moving they'll untangle themselves and spread themselves out and a lot of times i'll have them hooked to the end of a fishing rod i'll put them out and some a lot of times i'll put them on my outside outrigger which we call the long rigger and it'll be the farthest back and i've had days where the inside rods between them and the boat were going off but nothing on this guy i brought this guy in took the lure off or took the the teaser off put the lure back on the rod put it all back out i lost my bite but the teaser back on put it back out there my bite picked right back up on my inside rods so you may not get bit on your teaser but if it's teasing it could still be teasing fish into the spread and that's what you want so a lot of choices there belly hood makes some canyon runner make some canyon runners on the east coast boom birds painted fenders you can put a chain out there on a hand line and then create a bubble trail and put a lure behind it trolling techniques most of the time you're going to want to put your lures out in a v shape or a w shape and a v shape from the back of the boat so what that would look like you don't need outriggers to catch albacore but if you did have them your outside rod the outside long rigger would be your longest rod if you had a rod coming from right here off the boat he'd be back in here and then your corner rod your shortest rod would be back in here so you're creating a v shape from there to there like that if you add a center rod or shotgun rod as we call it this is where the w comes in and out to there okay we call this flat line and you've hooked it you're fishing short and you you're fishing maybe 25 30 feet behind the boat this guy is anywhere from 50 to maybe 70 feet behind the boat and then this is in between so so distance behind the boat 25 to 75 feet i fish my teasers off the corners or the long ringers trolling speed varies depending on the lures i'm typically five to eight miles an hour for most trolling lures for swim baits i troll one and a half to three miles an hour they will troll faster if they i troll them as fast i can get away with until they start skipping in the surface and then slow down slightly you want them to be swimming to work so don't troll through a school of tuna and then boat attitude is how the water comes off the bottom of your boat uh i'll cover that in my next seminar on advanced techniques but um remember to if you're fishing short here remember not to be more than 10 to 15 feet to the next lure 10 to 15 to the next lower so if you're fishing 30 feet here maybe you're a 45 here and maybe you're 60 here keep your pattern close together so that way it's working like a school of fish if your pattern if you have one at 30 and this one's at 55 or 60 and this one out here is at 90 you're all spread out and you're not so apt to get doubles quads things like that keeping them tight together will help produce multiple hookups so decide how you want to fish when i leave the dock if you're fishing with me i'll ask you how do you want to fish today you want a troll you want a troll to find fish and then learn how to convert to a wide open bite do you want to learn how to work the iron or do you want to fish live bait today i'll ask people that want to fish with me how they want to fish even though i don't run charters anymore i fish enough friends do enough promotional fishing that i like people to learn different technique if they choose to so in my next seminar we're going to talk about converting a troll caught fish to a wide open bite what it takes to do that we don't have time in this seminar to cover that or i would so converting the bike so if you're out there you've got a maybe a wide open bike going and you want to chum live bait is what most people used to chum with and our live bait typically is anchovies we get them at the bait dock either in el waco or in westport for us up here chopped up herring will work squid anchovies chopped up works really good and a lot of times what i'll do is i've even went to the food grade or the food the frozen food section of the grocery store and bought food grade calamari and put it in a bucket of seawater at the dock on the way out i let it thawed a little bit and once i got out there i chopped it up into quarter quarter inch bite sized pieces and that's what i used to chum with and it works great frisky's dry cat food will work pretty good too commercial chum the only thing i don't like about commercial chum is that it has blood in it and there are some days the sharks are going to show up and they'll show up even quicker if you're putting blood in the water and then the the iqfs the individually quick frozen anchovies you can buy them in 20 or 40 pound boxes take about a gallon's worth out of a box re-bag it let it set in your cooler or maybe outside the thaw and put the rest of them back in your cooler because they'll thaw out pretty quick take a handful of salt and throw in on that bag of of dead anchovies it'll help them sink if they're frozen a lot of times they they're hard to chum with something that doesn't sink so putting salt on them will cause them to sink popcorn i've had guys use popcorn throw it out there it's not the tuna eating the popcorn it's the birds eating the popcorn and the tuna come up to see what the birds are doing kind of tricks them to the surface what if they're jumping but don't bite change gear and change tactics only one arrow in your quiver limits your opportunities if you're going to be a successful tuna fisherman in the northwest then you need to learn to work the iron you need to learn to fish swim baits and you need to refine your troll techniques a little bit okay and there's a lot of guys that have been fishing a lot of different methods for years and have really refined their techniques quite a bit swim baits in the northwest we use swim baits we control them and this is your green sardine walleye whacker and your channel isla anchovy probably your three most dominant colors for albacore in the northwest the wildlife whacker is my number one and channeling anchovies number two i get mine from big hammer swim baits in southern california and they're at swimbaits.com you can also get them an england marine stores on on the coast and fisherman's marine locally here will they carry some swim baits as well eat me lures down in salem also makes lures great swim baits their local company the key to making a swim bait work effectively is to thread the jig head onto the swimbait properly and you can see here that what you want to do is you want to mark where that hook is on that swimbait and then thread that swim bait straight in there to where the hook comes out right dead center if you're trolling swim baits it's critical that this hook comes out dead center if you're casting swim baits to jumpers it's not so critical so lead jig heads don't worry about getting a whole bunch of different weights one ounces and two ounces okay i use one ounces with three and a half inch swim baits i use two ounces with five inch swim baits don't worry about a whole bunch of different weights don't worry about a whole bunch of different colors if you get those three colors and a couple these weights you're fine it doesn't have to be a painted jig head if it's just a bare lead jig head you're fine you it does matter that it has an eye on it though it does make a difference some days if you're catching fish and the eye gets knocked off there and you're still catching fish deal with it later keep catching fish and then go to bass pro or somebody that sells lure components and buy you some eyes and stick another eye on it you'll do fine you should use fluorocarbon a stretch four to five feet of fluorocarbon on your main line tie it directly don't put a swivel on it tie it directly to it and then tie your fluorocarbon directly to that jig head okay and then for your swim baits if you're trolling them put them out 75 to 100 feet behind the boat a lot farther back than traditional trolling gear and as i said before troll as fast as you want but once they start skipping out of the surface then slow down most of the time you're probably going to be four or five miles an hour most time you can't troll them seven six seven miles an hour because they'll start skipping and depending on the swim bait you may beat the tail off of it if you troll at seven miles an hour and then it's not working at all so okay if you're running and gunning for jumpers as you ease up to where a fish jumped as soon as you think you can cast to it go ahead and lob your swim bit out to it and let it settle 10 15 20 seconds flip the bale over on your if you're using a spinning reel which most people use for that put the bail over and slow reel most people reel too fast you barely want to turn the crank and reel it back if you reel it too fast you're not going to catch as many fish pitch it back out there again if you don't get bit let it settle some more flip the bale over and slowly bring it back again okay if you don't catch a fish move on want another jumper most the time people make the mistake of reeling too fast that's the biggest mistake they make so a lot of times when we're working the iron we're dead in the water or we're fishing live bait a lot of times i'll pitch a swim bait out way out from the boat and put it in a rod holder most of the time because of the drift it's going to be floating higher and it'll get bit while you're doing other stuff it just gives you more rods and more opportunities in the water one of the techniques that fishermen in the northwest really need to learn is working the iron and the reason why i say that you really need to learn this is because many times the water temperature is going to climb to 64 degrees and the tune are going to move down and you're going to have to have a way to go down and get them and unless you know how to work the iron you're going to have a very unsuccessful day and last thing you want to do is burn two three four hundred dollars worth of fuel running offshore with your buddies get all piped up you've been working all week and you get out there and the tuna are down in a thermocline and you can't get to them because you don't know how to fish iron it is an investment into the rod and reel that you're going to use but it's also a very fun technique and the technique has changed quite a bit in the last couple of years with jigging the last couple of years we've gone from high-speed jigging which some people refer to yoyo as well where you're working the rod really fast and reeling really fast the slope is jigging which is more of a technique once you get the lure in the zone high pitch jigging a little bit different twist on that and casting because some guys will use small iron or a lead painted jig with a hook on it to pitch to jumpers instead of a swim bait it's a lot of fun so this was a day offshore where my wife used iron to bring the fish up and the other guys on the boat didn't know how to fish iron but they were fishing live bait she went down and got him brought him up and the other people were then able to be successful catching live bait or fish albacore on live bait that day we put 54 on the deck in a two and a half hour stop and had to run i had to stop because we ran out of heights so high speed jigging also yo-yo jigging different rods and reels and lures than what you use for trolling you're using a shorter parabolic rod it flexes from the tip to the butt distributes the weight giving it more strength and spreading that weight distribution out and typically shuts off close to your back typically five foot six to six six the reels are high speed they're tall they're narrow and they bring in 42 to 48 inches of line per crank assist looks mostly on top of the lure and the tuna normally take the jigs on the retrieve we're talking about high speed jigging okay your lures are normally 110 grams to 140 grams of the most common weights and typically you should be able to be vertical 100 feet with your lure if you have wind drift and it's causing your line to have scope in it and you've got it at an angle here a high speed or yoyo jig is typically not going to work as effective so you want to put a heavier jig on so when you ask me how have you jigs should i fish fish i fish as lot of jigs i can get away with but still be vertical and be able to go down 100 feet most time i'm not fishing 100 feet most time i'm down and fishing in that thermocline that's 40 to 70 feet most of the time i'm fishing 110 to 140 grams 140 grams is pretty common for a weight so here's some of the um daiwa jigs that one's got the hooks on the back of it so took a picture some of these you notice they're all pink pink and white silver pink and white slow pitch jigging that's the latest thing anybody can do slow pitch jigging but it does take a slow pitch rod and you still need to have a real tall narrow reel that brings in 42 inches of line per crank if your reel brings in 38 39 40 you're probably okay but most of the time the difference between slow pitch and regular jigging is how your lure behaves okay when we drop iron down on a traditional jig yoyo or high speed jig we're bringing it back okay with slow pitch you're getting it down into the zone and you're working the rod and you're waiting for the fish to take it and you're feeling the lure as it goes down the lure is doing a whole different action i'm going to cover all this in a lot more detail in another seminar that i'm doing on just working the iron a lot more detail okay we only have time to basically touch on it today your conventional reels open face they're narrow they have good drags in them should be 20 20 pounds plus drag to be nice and smooth okay and we're using small precise movements to mimic a wounded fish trying and failing to swim away so i'll cover the rods and the reels in more detail like i said in another seminar here's the slow pitch jigs from daiwa they're sk jigs there's the zebra glow okay shimano's butterfly flat fall and whirlybird jigs williamson's crippled herring jig the iowa sk jigs and the nomad buffalo jigs i fish all these so and have fished all of them they work effective very effective less is more with slow pitch okay like i said i'm gonna get into this a lot more in the advanced top when i do that okay three jig categories fall jigs responsive jigs and long jigs they each have their place they each have a different movement and that movement can make a difference we fish many times there'll be three of us jigging on the boat and a couple of people live bait fishing and many times all three of us will have a different type of jig on and totally different technique high pitch versus slow pitch a different twist to slow pitch okay the action's smaller more finesse okay like i said we'll cover some of that salty sk jigs i prefer the glow pink pink and silver most predominant colors when you're fishing iron with albacore the most predominant colors pink there's your shimano jigs the pink blue okay black anchovy here's your flat fall jigs or your um yoyo jigs flat side of there's the originals that came out here's your hammer jigs for casting mega baits okay williamson vortech use a split ring 5.5 to six size test rated to rig it put a solid ring on top of that and then put a one out to three odd assist hook on top of that i use the gamakatsu 510 cyst hooks and the two outsides barbs on the outside okay i like it because when i drop my jig down my barbs on the outside and my bar my hook won't get caught on the line and the barb won't chafe the line live bait if you get the opportunity to fish live bait in the northwest you really should do it it's a lot of fun our anchovies are what we use for live bait typically you want to match the hook size to the bait our baits are about three inches long most of the time that's a one or a two number two hook size 30 to 40 pound fluorocarbon i fish 30 pound fluorocarbon all season i don't drop down because the fish are skitterish i just chum them more to get them going more most of the time okay there's nine different methods to hook the live bait most people either hook them in the nose or they'll hook them in the dorsal and then you want to get the bait to dive if you can okay your livewell's critical component of the whole scenario and that live well should fill in eight minutes it should be round or oval if it feels slower than eight minutes they may not get enough oxygen if it fills in nine minutes you're probably okay if it feels too fast they'll have to swim too hard they may die if the film fills up in seven minutes you're probably still okay okay put a light in there maybe have a clear lid or paint it this color of blue it's real soothing to the anchovies anchovies suffer from anxiety and it doesn't take much to kill them okay and then don't spend 150 on bait then run offshore on a rough ocean and kill your bait that doesn't make any sense okay we talked about hooking the bait hook them in the nose don't hook them up through the nose hook them sideways through the nose if you hook them up through the nose you'll pin their mouth shut and they'll suffocate and die so we'll come like this or hook them up in the dorsal if you want them to swim okay i like to use a seven and a half foot eight to eight foot rod because it gets the helps get the bait out away from the boat so the bait doesn't swim back under the boat if you fish something shorter than seven feet sometimes they're swimming back under the boat if you get out beyond eight feet sometimes it's too hard to land the fish if you ever get the chance to fish live bait for albacore it's a hoot it's a lot of fun it's a lot of action [Music] and it's fast and furious the rod you're going to want to use is somewhere between seven and eight foot is is what i like to use i have a seven foot six rod this is a daiwa proteus rod and it's got a nice soft tip on it it's paired up with a saltiga 20 lever drag and i've got 50 pound braid on here topped off with a fluorocarbon leader and i have it tied directly on using a double albright knot you use fluorocarbon because you need a little bit of stealth and tied to the end of that you have a live bait hook and the live bait hook for what we're fishing most of the time is a number two ring glide bait hook and it's tied directly to it there's a little ring there that causes this hook to be free so that way the bait can swim without any restriction the soft tip rod allows the albacore to pick it up without it feeling the stiffness of the rod and typically what happens is you'll have the bail open you'll have your up your anchovy overboard your bell open with your clicker on and as that tuna picks that up you'll count three four five and then slowly run the lever drag up you don't want to have a bale you just flip because then there's an immediate jerk and you may break it off especially when you're only fishing 30 pound fluorocarbon so you'll want a lever drag for this and you'll want to just gently bring it up and the rod will load up and fish on and once you have fish on follow your fish if the fish moves to the back corner follow your fish if somebody has a fish on that's up here trade places with them but always follow your fish if you don't follow your fish you and the other anglers are going to be all tangled up and you're going to have a lot of angry people and then when you get the fish on board cut them in the gills or right behind the pectoral fan there's a vein there and let them bleed out during the heat of the battle a tuna body temperature can heat up to 85 degrees okay if you don't get them cooled down they're going to be mush so bleed them head first down in a blade bucket and then put them on ice if you can make a slurry that's great and we'll talk about a slurry a little bit more in advance seminar i want to get to that one so yeah but keep them on ice and get them cold and don't hesitate to leave them in there overnight so that way they're nice and cold the next day all right so that's the end of this talk on basics i have another seminar coming up it's on advanced techniques it's going to get more into all of this and then there's also another talk on working the iron and then i have another talk that i'm producing where we're going to talk about getting really really good at finding fish and we're going to talk about serious xm fish mapping thanks for joining me today look forward to seeing you in the next seminar you

Channel: Del Stephens

Views: 5,268

Rating: 4.9550562 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: e0e3TDe_nYA

Length: 48min 10sec (2890 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021