Where do you start?

[Steve Arend]

Where do you start?

We have talked about how you start out your fishing before leaving a port, where to look for fish. What do you look for when heading out to fish? What to do after certain weather conditions.

But once you have figured out all of this and you are ready to put lines in the water, where do you start? What rigs are you going to run? Grant it these answers will be different with the number of rods you can run and what fish you are going to target.

Do you through a mixture out? Rigger, Dipsy, Core, High Lines, Drop weights, Copper,.

What do you start with? Cut Bait, Spoons – Magnum or Standard, Flasher/Flies, Body Baits.

Just wondering how everyone starts their fishing?

I normally have everything rigged and ready to fish the night before.

[HitMan]

This is from a perspective from a boat who runs a lot of different rods at a time. We ALWAYS start with 3 Downriggers, 4 Divers, depending on the time of year and water temperature, 4-10 lead cores, and if the water is really warm we will run some copper rigs. If fishing offshore, we usually run 6 surface boards and 4-6 lead cores. If we are fishing in the mud, in front of the piers, we ALWAYS run only 3 Downriggers, 2 Divers, and 2 Lead Cores, if possible to even run all of them, but always 3 Downriggers.

No matter what size boat, I personally would never fish without 2 Downriggers, at least 2 Divers, and 4 Lead Cores, if possible. A perfect 9 rod spread to me is 3 Downriggers, 2 Divers, and 4 Lead Cores.

We really only run Cut Bait on the chute Downrigger very deep and on Wire Divers, and this is usually only during tournaments or when we really need to use it. It gets expensive and time consuming so we avoid it if not necessary. We usually ALWAYS fish with spoons on all Lead Cores. Last year we had Stingray sized Stingers on the Lead Cores all year long. They seemed to be the ticket last year for most of the year. Like I stated in a previous thread, we do not use many Magnum Spoons at all anymore.

Flashers and Flies on all Copper Rigs. Spoons on all Divers and Downriggers until the bite switches over to a Fly Bite. Usually a regular-sized Stinger on the high divers and Stingrays on the Downrigger Main Lines and low divers and regular-sized Stingers on the sliders. Once July comes about, we then begin to fish with Flashers on the Downriggers and Divers and only Spoons on the Lead Cores and Sliders. We also will begin to fish Flashers and Flies on Lead Core when necessary.

Spoons eventually start to not produce, as well, as the year progresses. This is when Cut Bait and Flasher Fly Tactics really seem to take over as the water temperatures begin to rise.

Overall, I would say a lot of the "choices" depend on the individual and what they have the most confidence in. If you are good with Cut Bait or Flashers and Flies, you may tend to use them more than Spoons, etc., all throughout the year. We really adapt to all tactics available to us when needed. We know how to fish every tactic possible, pretty well. We adapt to what has been working and expand on that to adjust other rods to fit in our spread. Most every good Charter Captain and Tournament Fisherman are able to adapt to whatever techniques are needed at that specific time on that specific day. For example, a few years ago in the Grand Haven and Holland Tournaments, we used 9 Lead Cores both days of the tournament as that had been the best tactic all throughout the pre-fishing week. Overall, it is very important to be versatile and adjust to what is working, etc.