2025 Tuna and Exotics

Nick Clayton said:
I truly believe it does not matter. I will die on this hill lol.

I know that when you get out a time or two a year, and one rod is hot, it's easy to become convinced that those things matter. For me personally, I have the advantage of being out there 7 days a week and I have removed all variables. I fish the exact same troll spread every day of the week on gear trips, and I have seen more trolled flies than I can count. I truly believe it comes down to position at the time that we troll over fish, along with the aggression level of the fish at any given time. I find that removing all variables such as emotion and confirmation bias, along with a very large sample size, that I see absolutely zero indicator that any of that stuff matters when on the troll.

Ultimately I equate it to playing blackjack. You can stay on your 16 against a dealers face card because you feel a bust card is coming, and it will pay off on occasion and make you feel like your gut knew something, but over the course of thousands of hands, hitting a 16 against a dealers face card is statistically the better move.

That said, most people don't get the luxury of doing this every day of the week, so emotions and gut feelings and all that are a part of the fun. So by all means, play with it! I'm not trying to take the fun out of it for anyone, but just throwing it out there. Over the course of time I have become totally convinced that it doesn't matter one bit, and fishing something you're confident in and keeping it in the water is the important part.

At this point I fish a spawn head squid pattern, or a Seahawks colored half and half pretty much exclusively, and simply because they are fun and easy to tie, and I know I will catch albacore with either of those patterns every day of the week. When stopped and casting, things can get a bit different, but I'm also pretty well convinced at this point that in most scenarios it's the archer, not the arrow.

I like black and purple on the troll because it makes such a nice silhouette. All black would probably be just as effective for that matter I imagine.

You guys kicked butt yesterday, so no matter how you slice it you were doing plenty of things right! You ended up with just a few fish less than our other boat fishing bait, only you did it with fly rods and only 4 anglers!
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on trolled flies. What about @ffb advanced butt clenching technique. A gimmick or must have we all need to learn??
 
Btw....I'm currently 23 miles from the bar, limping home on Integrity at 9 knots. Port motor gave up the ghost a few miles from where I was planning to start fishing today. So we put gear in, killed 48 fish by 10 am, and have been making the slow crawl home since. It's absolute torture going this slow!
 
Evan B said:
Happens on my boat literally every time I let someone grab my 12wt. This rod snapped about 30sec after this photo.
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Yeah I honestly don't get it. It's so simple to fight these fish without lifting high, but for some reason it's near impossible to keep fly folks from doing it. Too much trout fishing in their blood I suppose.
 
Nick Clayton said:
Btw....I'm currently 23 miles from the bar, limping home on Integrity at 9 knots. Port motor gave up the ghost a few miles from where I was planning to start fishing today. So we put gear in, killed 48 fish by 10 am, and have been making the slow crawl home since. It's absolute torture going this slow!
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Don't you have three motors on that thing?!?
 
Nick Clayton said:
Btw....I'm currently 23 miles from the bar, limping home on Integrity at 9 knots. Port motor gave up the ghost a few miles from where I was planning to start fishing today. So we put gear in, killed 48 fish by 10 am, and have been making the slow crawl home since. It's absolute torture going this slow!
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Keep troll gear out. see how close you can still get nibbles.
 
Nick Clayton said:
Yeah I honestly don't get it. It's so simple to fight these fish without lifting high, but for some reason it's near impossible to keep fly folks from doing it. Too much trout fishing in their blood I suppose.
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Its more trying to get the fish to the gaff without pulling the leader through the tip for me. This seems to be where I go wrong.
 
so are you saying I shouldn't hold the rod over my head while I strip the fish in?
 
not guilty...of course, this fish tried to get tangled with one on the other side on a jig....it failed.
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Nick Clayton said:
At this point I've kinda given up trying to keep folks to keep their rod below their chin. Fly anglers just seen to hate their fly rods lol
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💯

Then again, I'm sure if someone filmed me throughout a fight, there are probably a few instances where it gets higher than it should....then again, maybe not, I'm relatively cognizant of that.
 
clarkman said:
not guilty...of course, this fish tried to get tangled with one on the other side on a jig....it failed.
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💯

Then again, I'm sure if someone filmed me throughout a fight, there are probably a few instances where it gets higher than it should....then again, maybe not, I'm relatively cognizant of that.
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Yeah but it's fiberglass. I don't think I ever saw you put that thing in danger.
 
dbaken said:
Its more trying to get the fish to the gaff without pulling the leader through the tip for me. This seems to be where I go wrong.
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That's the thing, there's no need to lift that high or worry about getting the leader into the tip. Leader into the tip is not an issue. Just keep the butt of the rod no more than chest high at most, and reel down to it. Leader no longer than 6' won't be an issue regardless, but the leader going into the guide is really no issue regardless.

Not being critical of anyone in particular, I just hate seeing so many folks break their rods. It's not about lifting the fish up towards the gaff, it's all about short lifts, reeling down to it, and keeping that lower section much flatter.
 
Nick Clayton said:
That's the thing, there's no need to lift that high or worry about getting the leader into the tip. Leader into the tip is not an issue. Just keep the butt of the rod no more than chest high at most, and reel down to it. Leader no longer than 6' won't be an issue regardless, but the leader going into the guide is really no issue regardless.

Not being critical of anyone in particular, I just hate seeing so many folks break their rods. It's not about lifting the fish up towards the gaff, it's all about short lifts, reeling down to it, and keeping that lower section much flatter.
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I was too busy laughing at myself for the PFD inflation to properly fight my fish. That’s my story and I’m (high) sticking to it!
 
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