Among the world's big-game boats, mullet, mackerel, ballyhoo,
strip baits and squid probably represent the most popular and
effective natural baits commonly trolled for billfish. You can
easily find all of these in nearly every tackle shop in the States,
and some bait companies even ship them around the world to
extremely remote hot spots.
Since crews usually feel rather strongly about what baits they
pull, most go to great lengths to ensure they have a good number of
their preferred offerings no matter where in the world they're
fishing. In fact, it's common to see an angler arriving in the
Bahamas, Mexico or any of the world's fishing hot spots lugging an
enormous bait cooler through customs at the request of the charter
operation. In some parts of Africa or South America, a convoluted
and hilarious discussion follows when some poor soul tries to
explain that "no, this is not food; it's fish bait," and therefore
not subject to some enormous amount of duty and/or import tax.
But the list of effective natural baits shouldn't stop with the
"big five." At one time or another I've caught billfish on just
about every fish that swims, including big-eyed mackerel (scad),
scaly or shark mackerel, eels, tarpon, barracuda, snapper, grouper,
jack crevalle, amberjacks, Pacific yellowtail, kahawai (Australian
salmon), wahoo, ladyfish, queenfish (leather jackets in Florida),
bonefish, milkfish, needlefish, houndfish, dolphin, bluefish,
rainbow runners, blue runners, madfish, several species of small
tuna (including the exotic dogtooth), and a couple of species of
flying fish. If I sat down and really thought about it, I could
probably add a few more species to that list, especially when I
consider the baits I've pitched to a fish raised on a teaser. And
if I live long enough, I expect my list to get even larger.
They Will Eat Anything
Back in the 1950s, the University of Miami did a big survey on the
stomach contents of Atlantic blue marlin. Researchers produced a
huge list of blue marlin prey that included flying gurnards,
triggerfish, nautilus and spiny rock lobsters - although I've never
heard of anyone using any of these as a marlin bait. They concluded
that blue marlin eat whatever is most readily available.
For years I read accounts of finding small billfish in blue
marlin stomachs, but last year in Bermuda I actually got to see
what we surmised were the remains of a billfish in the gut of a
large blue. The partially digested carcass sported a small bill and
may have been a sailfish, white marlin or even a baby blue. I do
know that small porpoises are terrified of big marlin, and I've
seen pods of porpoise shower like ballyhoo when a big blue came up
on them from behind. I have no doubt that big marlin eat small
porpoises and dolphins when they get a chance.
Toughness Counts
Once you've traveled out of range of the local bait shop, there
are several things to look for in a good substitute bait, and
durability probably ranks as the most important. A tough-skinned
bait that lasts a long time without washing out is always high on
the deckhand's hit parade, and with good reason. With baits already
hard to come by, you don't want to end up replacing your substitute
baits every five minutes. Any fish with a flat-sided body shape is
much easier to make swim than one with a round body shape. If you
want your flat-line bait to swim deep in the wake or behind a
teaser, pick a baitfish with a compressed body.
The big-eyed mackerel scad, which most crews call simply a scad,
represents the all-time favorite marlin bait in Cairns, Australia.
You can catch them in large numbers, they freeze reasonably well,
and their compressed body shape makes them a great swimming bait if
rigged properly. The only negatives are their soft, easily cut skin
and their overwhelming attraction to toothy critters. They make a
desirable bait for just about anything, so I like to call them the
Spanish mackerel of the Pacific.
Houndfish, called longtoms in Australia, are plenty tough, and
you can drag them forever if something doesn't eat them. In fact,
they usually don't last too long in the spread since wahoo and
mackerel love to cut them into manageable, bite-sized chunks.
Marlin love them, too, but the hookup ratio really stinks. I
remember one particularly savage crash strike from a definite
grander, with a resulting backlash that almost cost my angler a
finger, and we never did hook the fish.
Houndfish's smaller cousins - called needlefish in Florida,
stick fish in Hawaii, and garfish in still other areas - also make
great baits. As a kid I caught needlefish on small bait strips or
snagged them with treble hooks. I could rig them just like a
ballyhoo and never had one wash out no matter how fast my old boss,
Capt. Johnnie Whitmer, trolled.
Cutlass fish, or "silver eels," share the pros and cons of
houndfish. And although their extremely compressed body shape
allows them to swim beautifully, the hookup ratio is only so-so.
Again, an additional negative is their extreme attraction to the
big mackerel, wahoo and barracuda known to Aussies as the razor
gang.
Eels will always have a place in my heart. As a very young
captain in the Bahamas, I won my first major tournament largely
because of our use of eels. I spent a summer working as a mate in
New England after graduating from college and caught my first
swordfish on a large eel. Thereafter I learned that many skippers
up north favored using the tough, nearly indestructible smaller
eels as bait for white marlin.
Our angler in that tournament had 10 thumbs and a knack for
free-spooling when he should have been winding and vice versa. We
managed to get shot after shot on our tough little eels, and most
of the time we eventually hooked the fish. Many times after a
marlin or a sail stole a ballyhoo and/or mullet, we'd hook up on
the second, third, or even fourth bite on the "super eel."
While on the subject of tough baits, I should mention one of my
very favorites, the Australian queenfish, or what the Hawaiians
call lye. In Florida, we know a smaller relative of the queenfish
as a leather jacket. These little buggers have a skin so tough you
could strap one to each foot and walk from Palm Beach to Miami. But
beware of the sharp, stinging spines on the dorsal, anal and pelvic
fins - they really hurt. We hold queenfish very carefully with a
towel or heavy gloves and cut their fins off with a pair of heavy
shears before rigging them as dead or live bait. Both marlin and
sailfish love queenies, and they make one of the best baits on the
planet to use as a teaser for the bait-and-switch or when
fly-fishing.
Bluefish, known as tailor in Australia, are a favorite bait of
Aussie anglers seeking big, narrow-banded Spanish mackerel also
known as a tanguigue - a game fish that resembles our kingfish
painted with wahoo stripes. In 1971 I caught my first world-record
black as a captain on a tailor we had rigged on a 30-pound outfit.
At 816 pounds it turned out to be much larger than the 400-pound
estimate I had made when I called for the 30-pound rod. The big
black piled on the bluefish bait without hesitation and after a
frenzied fight nearly doubled the existing world record.
Since that day, bluefish have always been welcome in my spread,
especially when fishing for giant bluefin tuna. (You may have seen
a great series of photographs that Paul Murray took of a giant
busting a big bluefish alongside the Cookie while fishing off Cape
Cod.) The bluefish's compressed body shape makes it one of the
easiest baits to make swim. If a belly-rigged J-hook is used,
there's usually no need to add lead or remove the backbone to make
these babies swim.
Long vs. Short
I haven't kept accurate numbers to figure out any hard percentages,
but over the years it has become obvious to me that hooking fish on
long-bodied baits is harder than it is on short baits of equal
weight. Both a long, skinny, 20-pound wahoo and a short, fat,
20-pound tuna are extremely attractive baits that are considered
prime fodder by moderate to large blue and black marlin. However,
your hookup ratio will be much higher on any species of short
stubby tuna than on a wahoo or king mackerel.
On Australia's Great Barrier Reef, when our most desirable big
baits like tuna, scaly mackerel and rainbow runners are hard to
come by, we sometimes rig what we have come to call "Frankenhoos"
or "Frankenmacks." Here's the recipe: Take one 40-pound wahoo or
king mackerel, cut out a 20-pound chunk of its midsection and save
it for dinner. Sew the two ends together with heavy Dacron or waxed
nylon rigging thread. Take some duct tape and wrap it several times
around the joint where the two pieces are stitched together, then
sew again, through the tape, so the wash of seawater while trolling
does not ruin your first stitch job. Use whatever rig you are
familiar with to tie a large hook on top of the wahoo's head, and
start trolling. If a large marlin is in the vicinity, she's going
to eat it.
In Cairns, during a temporary shortage of big baits, we once
rigged a truncated wahoo of well over 40 pounds. Much to the horror
of my client, we put it out immediately after finally catching a
dozen 8- to 15-pound bonito.
"Why would you ever put that thing out when we just caught all
these beautiful little tunas?" he asked. I replied, "It took Doug
so long, and he worked so hard getting it rigged that I don't have
the heart to tell him to cut it off and throw it away."
A few minutes later we hooked a 1,040-pound black marlin on the
unusual bait, and that evening we celebrated the catch with two
kinds of sashimi - tuna and the 20-pound section we cut out of our
wahoo.
Dolphin, Jacks and the Rest
Dolphin, dorado, mahi mahi - call them what you will - make a great
meal but just an OK bait. Dolphin actually make a very good fresh
dead bait, but only on the same day it is caught. If frozen or kept
on ice, even if only overnight, dolphin won't last in the spread
very long before the tail flops off.
Dolphin and rainbow runners both make poor live baits but good
dead baits. Neither fish will struggle or even swim actively when
used alive, and it is not unusual for a marlin to pass up a live
dolphin or runner to eat a dead one. Rigged dead dolphin do,
however, swim extremely well because of their highly compressed
body shape. My good friend Capt. Alex Adler once caught a bluefin
tuna over 900 pounds on one while fishing off Cat Cay in the
Bahamas.
Although rainbow runners make lousy live baits, they are a
staple dead bait among Cairns marlin skippers targeting big black
marlin. Because of their rotund body shape, it's hard to make them
swim with any consistency, but juveniles can be used as a small
bait, while large (over 6 pounds) individuals will last for at
least a couple of days of fast trolling - if not eaten first.
I prefer head rigs and circle hooks on both small and large
runners, and with a towing point well out on the nose, even a 15-
or 18-pound runner can be used on the roughest of days without an
inordinate number of false alarms from tripped outrigger pins.
Atlantic amberjacks and almaco jacks, Pacific yellowtail, and
giant trevally are all members of the genus Seriola and have a
similar look and body shape. They make great baits, and you can
easily rig smaller ones to swim. I've caught marlin on all of
them.
Two of my favorite big baits are ancient species with unusual
mouth shapes that require a little extra care when sewing them up.
What Floridians call ladyfish, Cairns captains call giant herring,
and they are great fun to catch on light tackle. With a hook sewn
onto their heads, they make a top-notch and hardy trolling bait.
Like those of a bonefish, the glittering shiny scales eventually
wash off, but the bait is hardy and lasts for quite a while even
after losing its scales.
Take extra care to sew up the underslung lower jaw, which tends
to gape. If one or both sides of the lower jaw are not closed
tightly, they will tend to protrude unevenly and make the bait
spin. The fairly cylindrical bodies of ladyfish make them great
skipping baits.
When Marlin magazine recently showed a photo of the small
species of tarpon found in Australia (known there as oxeye herring)
being used as black marlin bait, we got a few horrified responses,
but it is not an uncommon bait Down Under. Unlike our larger
Atlantic tarpon, a 6-pound Aussie tarpon is considered full grown,
and they make terrific baits. (Noted Aussie author Peter Goadby
topped the fleet in Cairns one year, catching a fish over 1,200
pounds on one.)
You can use a belly rig with a very small tarpon when using a
large J-hook, but nowadays I stick to head rigs and circle hooks.
Again, be sure to sew the mouth so that it stays symmetrical and
remains closed. Because of their compressed body form, small tarpon
will swim like crazy if rigged correctly.
Barracuda are a long way from being my favorite bait (except
when fishing for sharks or big grouper), and while I have never yet
seen a marlin eat a big one (say over 20 pounds), I still use them
when I am desperate for a big bait. Small 'cudas, especially the
species known commonly in the Pacific as sennets or pick-handle
barracuda, make a great bait. In the early 1970s we caught the
biggest marlin of the Cairns season - a fish over 1,100 pounds - on
a small, belly-rigged sennet.
Any splashing dead fish will get a bite once in a while,
including snapper, grouper and jacks, but before I get to that
stage I'll usually switch to lures. Even for the bait-and-switch, a
small soft-headed lure works just fine. Matching the hatch may work
great for trout, but for billfish your baits just have to be the
right size. And if no big school of bait is around, a marlin will
eat just about anything. That being said, if you do run across a
school of small tuna of any kind, I would highly recommend catching
one and putting it out as a live bait!
