Casting Distance With Bait

[Bill B]

Very good information.....Bill

[SoCalAngler]

Ok, we went over no angles, tuna shuffle and which side of the boat to fish, wind in your face.

Like I said before all sport boats drift stern first, so you drop/cast off the stern and depending which way the wind is blowing will determine if you move toward the port or starboard side of the boat and up the rail as you move to keep your line in front of you. I think this is pretty clear and most will get the the hang of this very quick.

Now on the other hand if the boat is anchored (fishing on the hook) either closer to shore, on high spots or around islands the way the line goes out in the water will be different than when on a drift. When anchored all the fishing lines will want to go to the stern of the boat. In most cases this is the direction of the current. So as you can see if 20-25 people all get their lines out sooner or later all those lines will be heading off the stern and there is no way 20 or more people can fish off that small of an area. Fishing on the hook is where I see the most tangles happen. How I try to avoid this is to get my line out around mid ship or off the bow. I try to get my line as far away from the boat as I can without damaging the bait. This way as my bait swims out hopefully by the time I reach the crowed stern my bait has either been picked up or its time to change it.

One other thing I feel that is very important to avoid tangles is to stay in contact with your bait. By this I mean if you can't feel your bait swimming on your line you are not in contact with it. By not staying in contact with your bait only bad things can happen. The most common things are you have dumped too much line into the water and you have no idea where your bait is, you have a dead bait on your hook or you are already wrapped with someone. Any of these cases are not good so if you don't feel your bait swimming it's time to check on it. I have seen many people new to our left coast style of fishing say "look my line is still going out my bait must be ok. This is in fact not the case, after several/many yards of line are in the water the current will pull on your line just like a bait swimming. If you can't feel the bait swimming something is wrong.

Like Mark said when you feel your bait get nervous get ready. I can tell by this statement he knows how to stay in contact with his bait. Why? How else would he know what a nervous bait feels like if he was not in contact with it? You must be in contact with your bait at all times to increase your odds of catching and most importantly for the theme of this thread, stay out of as many tangles as you can.

[SoCalAngler]

Of course staying in contact with your bait applies to fly lining live fin bait. I won't go into fishing the squirts (squid) or dropper loop rigs in this thread. But, these last two are more about keeping slack out of your line.

[Rivverrat]

With the level of info here I wonder if we might sticky this thread ? .... Jeff