Thanks to my position here at Marlin, I enjoy the luxury of fishing and learning from some of the best crews in the business. Most all of them know how to fish with live baits, lures or dead-bait/lure combos, and all are adept at the art of the bait-and-switch. World-record and fly anglers came up with idea of dragging hookless teasers close to the boat so they could identify the size and species of the attacker and then "pitch" the appropriately sized bait and line class that they kept ready in the cockpit for a chance at a possible record. For example, if you're trying to break the 20-pound blue marlin record and a fish half the size you need pops up behind your teaser, you might want to toss the 8-pound gear instead.
It didn't take long for our sport's top crews to realize this was actually quite a fun way to fish, especially for the angler, who gets to see the fish eat his bait just a few feet from the rod tip.
As much fun as it is, the bait-and-switch does come with a bit of a learning curve. You can't just hop on a boat having never used a lever-drag reel in your entire life and pick up the intricacies of the technique right off the bat. I know - I've seen dozens of eager Marlin University students mess up a switch in more ways than I can count. But with every lost fish comes more knowledge.
Of course, you could employ a few tricks to help your anglers make the switch a little more successful, like start trolling your pitch baits just short of your teasers. This shortens the time it takes to get the bait in proper position once a fish rises to the teaser, but it doesn't help a lick once the fish eats it.
To cut down on backlashes on flubbed free-spools, you might want to consider pitching a small lure with the drag set on strike. By holding the rod tip up and bowing to the fish when it eats your pitched lure, you get an almost instantaneous hookup without having to worry about free-spool mishaps.
What most people don't realize is that every time you drag any kind of hookless lure in your spread, you're practicing the bait-and-switch. Even if you have six armed lures chugging along in the spread, once you throw two bridge teasers into the mix, you are in reality, switch baiting. And if your anglers aren't skilled enough to get a bait in the water quickly and back to a lit-up white marlin as well as free-spool properly once bit, then you might want to rethink the notion of pulling teasers - especially during a tournament.
Now I realize that all my teaser-making buddies are howling at that statement, but if the one fish you see during the White Marlin Open or Bermuda Big Game Classic comes up and smacks one of your teasers and then fades off before your anglers wake up and get another bait back to it, you're going to kick yourself in the butt during the long ride home.
Larger, and More of Them
With all that said, nobody's paying attention to me. Most crews deploy teasers - even charter boats that don't have a clue as to how skilled their anglers are - whether fishing for fun or competing in tournaments.
"Everybody knows that the guys pulling the most stuff in the water are going to win," says Tournament Cable's Chuck Richardson, who makes spreader bars and dredge teasers so large that I couldn't get a good photograph of them in my tiny studio. Richardson's statement rings true when you realize that only very skilled crews can deploy and retrieve big teasers without making a mess of the spread or a hookup.
Richardson specializes in building enormous dredges and spreader bars for the Northeast tuna crowd, and his creations reach epic proportions. One of the dredges he sent me to photograph consists of three six-armed titanium dredges loaded with 33 11-inch-long Mann Mannhaden baits. It's a monster and should bring a lot of attention to your spread. It weighs in at 29 pounds, so you better make sure you've got a mate with some muscle when it comes time to pull it in.
One of the newest and most interesting teasers on the market got its start from the old adage, "The best teaser is a billfish in the spread." The Marlin-X teaser is just that - a large, swimming replica of either a sail or white or blue marlin. Aaron Horning, a NASA engineer from Virginia Beach, Virginia, came up with the idea of a "marlin decoy" after talking to some buddies who fished offshore. After two years refining the idea, Horning introduced the 60-inch replica that swims like the real thing. "I've always liked making new stuff, and I wanted to make something big and practical. We also wanted to get that wow factor," he says.
The Marlin-X weighs about 14 pounds, and 10 pounds of that comes in the form of strategically placed lead. "If you throw it in the swimming pool, it will float with its dorsal up and give you the chills," says Horning. "We like to run the Marlin-X behind a squid chain. Most fish come up on it and slide in on the flat line because there's already a fish following the chain. It just looks ridiculously good behind the chain."
