The Lures

The first choice for all lure trollers are purpose designed trolling heads with some form of skirt fit­ted. These come in a hundred different patterns and a thousand different skirt combinations; they can also cost anything from a few dollars to a king's ransom. Cheapies Starting with the cheapies, a 60 gm red and white feather will still take a heap of fish. The lure is improved by running a file across the face of the lead head and removing 3 or 4mm of metal leaving a flat face. The next is the Wilson No. 2 Sea Jet in pink over Christmas tree. This lure, while quite cheap is devastating on tuna and small marlin. Don't go trolling without it. Both these lures are rigged with 8/0 Tarpons or Mustad 7732 stainless hooks and either 150 or 250 pound traces.

More Expensive

The next lot go from reasonably priced to expen­sive, it's just a matter of what takes the anglers fancy. The small to medium Pakulas like the Cockroach, Homet, and Mosquito are all well proven on yellowfin. Colours that work best are pink over mauve, black over blue and lime green over yellow. These are rigged with single 8/0 or 9/0 Mustad 7732 stainless hooks. Next in the selection are two Zuker trolling heads featuring red and white feather tails and blue-black tails. Pacific put out a model, which is rounded in the head and tends to get blown all over the place by the wind, but it still catches a lot of fish.

At the large end of the range the Tom Nairn made Top Guns in blue, silver and green take their share of the tuna and a fair number of marlin as well. This is rigged with two 10/0 Mustad 7732 hooks. Our best tuna-trolling lure by a wide stretch is an old Penn Fenwick Psycho-speed in pink over white. Despite its age it just keeps catching fish. It's just one of those lures that fish like to eat.

Almost all our tuna lures are rigged with a single hook. The trend to double hook rigs helps with billfish, but we seem to do better on yellowfin using single hook rigs and smaller sized hooks than for marlin. As can be seen from the selection, the lures are mostly small or long and thin. This seem to suit the yellowfin much more than the chunky, splashy models that work so well on marlin.

Most of our tuna lures are rigged on 250 lb trace material. The big lures on heavy tackle go out on 400 lb trace but 250 lb, is enough for most of the lures. The trace has little or nothing to do with yellowfin tuna, but with the striped and blue marlin that take the same lures in the same places as the yellowfin. The marlin wears out 150 lb traces fairly easily but it takes a lot longer to wear out the 250 lb.

Minnows

Apart from standard trolling heads, minnow lures are also readily attacked by yellowfin. Both the bibless and bibbed types will work and selection is a matter of personal choice. We have had good success with the CD 18 and CD 26 Rapalas and the big Haleo minnows. Best colours are red head white body and blue mackerel. The minnows are trolled on two metres of 80 lb trace rigged with a large snap swivel at the business end and a brass ring at the other. Billfish don't hit the minnows very often and when they do they usually unhook very rapidly, so the minnows can go out on quite light trace.

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