Bowling-pin teasers do a great job of simulating a school of small tunas or baitfish following along behind the boat. A lot of crews rig up six or even eight pins in a chain to really get the marlin fired up and interested in the spread.
Some crews even resort to putting a heavy trolling sinker in front of the chain to get the pins a bit deeper to help draw fish up from the depths. This does a great job, but that big sinker looks pretty ugly and doesn't do your transom or teak cockpit any favors when a mate has to drag it in during the heat of battle.
To get my pins down, I rig each one with 3 1/2-ounce longliner swivel leads. With just five pins, that translates to 17 1/2 ounces of lead, which is plenty of weight for slow to medium trolling speeds. To attach the weights to the pins, I use an extra-heavy scissor connector (shown above) or an extra-small stainless-steel shackle.
Also to keep my pins from getting scratched up by the main line, I like to wrap them with a small section of leftover skirt material. Just find a piece of skirt that fits snugly; then slide it over the bowling pin and apply a little Zap-A-Gap, and you are golden.
You can even get extra fancy and attach a Calcutta bait strip to the back end of each pin using an extra-heavy split ring. This adds a tremendous amount of flash and action to an already killer teaser setup.
Walker Holcomb
Maitland, Florida
