No Outrigger Bluefin Tuna Trolling + Hogy Directional Bird Bar

[Music] hey folks captain mike here from salty cave today we're east of chatham at a spot called crab ledge the original game plan was to cast to tuna keating on sand deals we spent some good feeds yes the tuna are still here but no the feeds aren't as epic as they have been so we're switching to plan b we're a light tackle trolling hopefully for bluefin tuna and uh let's kick this season off with some nice fish [Music] so i just want to take a minute to talk about our setups up close so obviously we're fishing with directional bird bars and as you can see i have the reddish pink in the green bird bars the radish pink is to delineate the port side and the green is to delineate the starboard side because obviously as you can see by these fins on their underbelly of these birds they're going to track their outboard direction so these are going to take these bird bars way out of our wash and spread out our spread hence the name spread now in the inside lanes i'm going to have two classic bird bars and so what that's going to do is we're going to have two spreader bars one on each side outside the wash and then these inside the washer we're going to stagger the lengths of where we position these in the spread so depending on which entry point of fish comes into the washes tuna tend to be attracted to the boats it maybe simulates a whale and a feed of some sort will have something for everybody depending on where they come in the spread so i have the reddish pink port directional bar ready to get put out on the port side that's effectively my outside rigger and in my inside lane i have the classic bird bar and that's going to be just in this in the wash this directional bar is going to be just outside the wash so with two bars i get both spectrums on the port side and then i'll replicate it again on the starboard side so you can see that fin or wing or whatever you want to call it under the bird how it's just pushing against the water pushing the the spreader bar outboard away from the boat until the more line you let out the further wide these bars are gonna go so now i'm gonna send the classic bird bar down the inside so i have one bird in the wash one bird outside the wash now so far we have two fish they both came in on the olive color which is not a surprise to me because they're keyed in on sand deals and but one on the inside and one on the outside sometimes they're attracted to the wash they'll swim in the wash and then if they veer out they'll find the bird on the outside of the wash so this is a perfect spread of just inside and outside the watch and now we're going to do the starboard side i'm going to put this one a little closer to the wash again most of these are quite close to the boat the name of the game today is to remain maneuverable and really have a tactical trolling pattern so to recap we've got the starboard bird bar way out this one's back a little further the port bird bar back out inside classic rigger on the port side inside classic rigger on the starboard side the lines are staggered a little bit so we have sort of a depth in all the different places in the wash and uh so depending on the fish that are attracted to the boat there's something for everybody in the spread [Music] so i go back and forth on my placement with my directional bars my outboard bars the bars that swim away and outside the wash the most logical spots obviously in the rod holder but i also sometimes put them in the leaning post and it gets the rod up a little higher so if you put a little more line out it's going to swing even further out now the other reason why i like it up high in the leaning post is if i am going to fish with a flat line clip freeze up a rod holder aft [Music] so the beauty of these floating bird bars is when you're on a short crew like we are today you just let that bird float out there it's just doing its thing so i'm on the port side and so the port bird bar is just floating out there while i fight this fish be amazed at how many times a fish will hit a bird bar that's just floating in the water these are smaller school-sized bluefin tuna on the hoagie hybrid rod so you know it's just nice easy fishing didn't even get all our lines out just had the port side and one starboard off to a great start the reason why i want this fish upwind is so when we go to land it we don't drift over the fish and uh as you can see the fish is getting further to the bow i'm just gonna pop the boat in gear just the port engine and that's gonna spin the bow out this way and put us back in that quarter position off the stern you ever introduce a kid to tuna fishing this is the kind of tuna that i would recommend i have about a 30 foot top shot of about 65 pound test mono on this outfit that i use for anything from tubing with stripers all the way up to school bluefin tuna like we're doing here that monofilament gives the rod a little bit of a shock abrasion because mono tends to stretch and with that stretch so if you can imagine with the the braid with zero flex when the boat hits when the fish hits i should say it just gives it a little extra cushion so it doesn't put too much pressure on the on the outfit you can see i'm coming into that top shot of line and that tells me that well i was once close to the boat that often happens when they see the boat just going to get it back to that quarter position turn down on the fish i'm going to keep that fish upwind this fish is suddenly feeling a little bigger now so just put my pored engine in gear i want to keep that fish right on this back corner turn the wheel a little bit i don't want to let that fish get under the boat so i'm just turning around the fish see this nice soft happy action of this outfit very forgiving and rough seas what you don't want to do is give these fish any slack let me get a glove while the gloving's good here trying to turn down on that fish i do not want this fish underneath me fish is doing what's called this death spiral where they swim in a rotation around the boat jack's going to go get me the gaff so i have that handy just want to hook it there so i can reach to grab it we have a first time tuna crew on the boat so i'm gonna try to show how to land and gaff this all myself here again in color decent fish it's coming around on its spiral it's coming back around the death spiral so you know it's getting tired when it's back that's when i put the pressure using a little extra thumb pressure on the spool to turn the fish that's what tires them out now short pumps often when they come back towards you there you want to gain line when they get to about 10 o'clock right there you want to stop them that's where you want to stop them to get the spout now is when you try to get lined on that fish there we go got him there you go got him right in the head and the desk brow worked it and here he goes beautiful fish perfect keeping and eating size came in on the the olive colored bird bar you can see now what we like to do with these fish is we bleed them here we got the so i'm going to do is they put an incision right here see that right there then i cut this little spot on his chin and get now if i had a saltwater washdown pump on the boat i would pump water into these wounds but there we go [Music] so the name of the game today is really working the life hard and staying with it staying with the bubble feed staying with the life what i'm going to do as we approach this bubble feed up here off the starboard side i'm gonna turn down over it and look at my unit and i'm gonna just work the life [Music] oh on yeah [Music] so we saw fish on the side scan there and we thought we saw one roll and so what i like to do with these bird bars is i'll tease them i would crank it in let it back out crank it in let it back out and if fish are following your bar at that point that surge and drop surge and drop surge and drop can really create that fomo sensation where the fish are just you know feel like they're going to miss it and then they'll go and grab it and so it's a great technique and that's one thing you can't really do as easily with the outriggers because you'll pop the outrigger so in these no outrigger bird bars these directional bird bars you can do stuff like that you can drop you don't have to worry about popping a rigger and just just work great it i i love that technique [Music] so we've got a limit for our box so we're going to call it a wrap super impressed with jack here from hoagie lures his first time tuna fishing well i have to say you're gonna be a little spoiled but his first two gaff shots both in the head we are doing pretty awesome pretty happy nice going jack we're gonna get this guy in the ice and back at it [Music] i just want to talk about colors for a moment now there's two types of colors when it comes to lures there's attractors then there's imitators tractors are your bright colors your pinks your fluorescent greens your imitators are well just the way they sound they're specifically imitating uh they're specifically imitating something today the fish were really keyed in on sand deals and our intent was originally to cast into feeds but that didn't happen today so we pulled out the light tackle trolling outfits and just knowing the waters here on cape cod that sand deals are tuna forage i'd say 75 of the time when i come out here and uh so i always load up on all of color spreader bars this is the lure we intended to use the hoagie harness jig and all of sandia color but um you know plan b is with this bird bar in the all of color and it like we couldn't keep these bars out for more than a couple of minutes before getting smoked and they really wanted the sandeel color we started half attractors half imitators and by the end of the morning it was all olive colored spreader bars and that was the ticket and then other days they don't you know they want the high viz but when they're keyed in when there's a lot of bait like there is today the natural colors really did the trick the outfit we're using is the hoagie hybrid rod now this is a you know a very easy light tackle fun setup to use i have the lx 6 for the reel this is actually a two speed reel i have it spooled with 80 pound test braid and a top shot of 65 pound test mono the mono is a nice feature because when you're trolling with braid it sort of serves as a shock absorber you know there's a lot of pressure when a fish hits takes off the other direction mono tends to stretch more than even fluorocarbon certainly more than braid so this mono in this setup is going to give a nice um soft shock shock absorption this this outfit weighs nothing it's you know i can one hand it's very lightweight you know this season we've used uh our first shoot of the season was with this rod for uh vertical jigging haddock and cape cod bay fluke off nantucket tube and worm stripers and today um 55-ish inch tuna and so it's a truly like a hybrid rod it does it all and um you know as jack just pointed out um you know this rod feels appropriate in each case um it has a soft very parabolic action you can just see how soft this outfit is and it's uh you can put a ton of boots to it uh when i was fighting those fish with my gloves on for a little extra drag i was just really socking down that spool when the tuna was doing that desk spirals instead of taking line on the outside pole of the desk rod i put the boots to it i wasn't worried about the rod it just flex flex flex it's a nice easy rod they're short they're light and what i especially like about this rod you know it's low profile it's a small light rod also has a small profile reel so you know today it was originally designed to be a jig and pop shoot but these fish really scattered out and it was really a trolling day the nice thing about these outfits is i have a half a dozen of them with me they all fit inside the head in my console they all stayed out of the way and when it came time to plan b today which was this awesome tuna shoot so no complaints these raws are ready to go but in the meantime if we were running a gunning tuna we wouldn't had any of these above decks and in our way [Music] there's literally fish on this on the side skin i think we just got hit whoa so these lightweight outfits are really forgiving you can put a lot of boots the raw's not going to break they're light but this is a bar a lot of line it's really nice we can shift it into low gear so this little avid lx6 it's a two-speed and that fish just took a lot of bar a lot of line and especially if you got you know kids fighting the fish or maybe someone that's tired shifting into low gear i'm getting line i got my drag socked up my heavy braid and you can see how easy this is this light rod and you really don't need to get beat up with these outfits this two-speed feature you'll never really need inshore unless you hook the lobster potter or something but this makes this outfit so much easier to use this low gear so as this fish gets closer and sees the boat sort of part two of the battle begins and so the closer i get to landing the fish the shorter my pump strokes are the more vertical this fish is still out of ways but the key is to get constant pressure always the goal is to get line even if it's just a little so the goal is to land the fish as quickly as possible the faster the landing the healthier the release you can see this fish is getting more and more vertical to us as we get closer to the boat short rod pumps really put a ton of pressure it doesn't feel like you're getting much line but if you're getting a crank this every every time you come down it's a very high gear ratio reel so you're getting more line than you think this fish is trying to do its death spiral already so we're going to release this fish and i'm going to put this rod in the holder here because they got a lot of line of the spreader bar just going to leader the fish so we're going to release this fish and keep tuna with two just like a striper i'm just going gonna swim him alongside the boat just like we're doing here and grab the hook in the corner there he goes [Music] so the takeaway for today is it's always good to have a plan b we came out with the spinning gear ready for some top water fish but today they were scattered so plan b was pulling out a spread of light tackle trolling rods that i kept stowed and hidden in the head of my center console here and uh it was awesome half dozen 55-inch class bluefin tuna bent rods light tackle smiles all day time to head for the barn and beat this win but two thumbs up [Music] you

Channel: Hogy Lures

Views: 21,544

Keywords: bluefin tuna, spreader bars, hogy lures, tuna fishing, offshore trolling, tuna trolling, offshore fishing, spreader bar, cape cod, how to troll for tuna, bluefin tuna fishing, trolling bird, trolling birds for tuna, sterling side tracker, spreader bars for tuna, cape cod bay tuna fishing, contender boats 25t, contender boats in rough seas, capt. mike hogan

Id: WX2KTowFHr4

Length: 19min 15sec (1155 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2022