Fishermen's Fleet Reports

Technically Foulable

So, out we went again, this time with Andres. Most of you haven't had the pleasure yet, and as soon as you get down here we can correct that. He isn't a seasoned fisherman, but he did a very credible job. He did well reeling in his first yellowtail, listening to instructions from Chris, Fernando, and myself, and still getting the fish in. He had clearly absorbed much of the info passed to him, because by his second fish he was lookin' good. The only problem with the day was that his second was our second, and our last. While it wasn't the best part of the moon and all, it was still a less than stellar day with two fish in, and 3-4 fish who should have been  hooked, escaping. I thought that I would share with you some of our endless analysis of why this was, and what to do about it the next time. It's always hard to compare one day to another and to draw conclusions, because there are so many variables beyond our control, but let's do it anyway.

      Ostensibly we were doing the same thing on both days, ie. drifting live bait just above the bottom, using fluorocarbon leader and circle hooks. We actually got more bites the second day, but less fish in the boat. The things that were notably different were:
--We were using caballito, not mackerel, as the macs were hard to come by.
-- Fernando used the circle hooks through the fishes upper "lip", instead of the previously described bridling
    our day #1 Captain Lalo had used.
-- The hooks were a couple of sizes larger with Fernando than they had been with Lalo.

   In the instances where the fish took our baits they ran against the drag for 20-30 yards and then were gone. This would seem to imply that they hadn't gotten the baits all the way down into their mouths. The circle hooks' action depends on the bait having been swallowed and the fish swimming away from you. Either the yellowtail were holding the baits in their mouths, not swallowing them, or perhaps the hooks had become fouled, with the tip of the hook snagging back into the bait resulting in the hook being unable to lodge in the corner of the mouth of the prey as is almost always the result with circle hooks. Chris reminded me of a good tip when using circle hooks. The traditional instructions are to basically point the rod down the line towards the fish, when you feel that he has run far enough to have swallowed the bait to then put the reel in gear and raise the rod slowly, not to set violently. He prefers to start slowing the lines' departure with his thumbs prior to putting the reel into gear. This would give the bait a more gradual departure acceleration out of the yellows' mouth, as opposed to the more instant departure brought about by the putting of reel in gear. This is especially advisable when using spectra as the lack of stretch exascerbates this issue.  It is also possible that since the caballitos are larger than the mackerel that if the yellowtail were smaller they would have more difficulty engulfing the baits, but as all the 'tails that we caught or had seen caught were big fish, this is not likely. It could also be that with different current flows that fish were not feeding as aggressively as a few days before. Fernando also pointed out that the caballito have a bony horizontal plane on the section of the body just forward of the tail, and he said that sometimes fish have a harder time eating caballito because of this..
These are all of the likely possibilities we could come up with for the difference in hook up ratios from day to day. For us this is one of the best parts of fishing, analyzing the results of a days efforts, comparing it to past experiences and your understanding of the considerable mechanics involved in the process, and uploading what you believe to be the pertinent info for the next time. Out of this coleslaw of possibilities I believe that the next time that I go yellowtail fishing the things that I will make sure to incorporate are:

--Bridling the bait and using the smaller size hook as I believe that these steps will result in less fouling of the hook tip.
--Making sure to incorporate Chris' tip on "prebraking" prior to putting the reel in gear with circle hooks.
--Hoping for better luck. You can work on the Yin, but you gotta wait for the Yang.

david