Bluewater bibbed deep diving trolling lures help!

[ALI-G]

Hi there,

I have just returned from the Solomon Islands which is an amazing and unchartered fishing mecca for the most part!!

I managed to catch plenty of fish on skirts and plastics but encountered a few issues with bibbed lures while out there. I had purchased 5 Sebile Salt & Sun 136 Koolie minnows to take with me but had major issues getting them to swim. It now seems after speaking to Sebile that we may have been trolling too fast for the lures to cope and so they just kept popping up. Anyway, after giving up on them (I threw them in the bin, stupid I know!!) and a ruined days charter I managed to buy some Halco scorpion lures which swim great but it turns out the hooks are made of butter!!! I had 15 wahoo strikes and only managed to land 1 fish as the halco hooks kept bending straight and the halco wire traces (100lb) kept breaking at the swivels and the snaps.

I would really like some recommendations on tough, deep diving bibbed trolling lures that come with the appropriate hardware for tropical species, swim straight out of the box and can be trolled faster than 4 knots!!

I will be making my own traces with bearing swivels and snaps in future!

Thanks people!!!

Ali G

[Jewhunter]

Halco laser pro 190 in standard & crazy deep.

You could replace the trebles with big singles but they

are pretty tough.

Cheers,

Grant.

[Captain Spanner]

When I went to the Solomons we used the 2 halco laser pro models described above. Xrap 30s handle speed pretty well. We also caught fish on a classic blue water f18. We used a foot of single strand 61lb wire albrighted to a 100lb mono leader. We did our own haywire twists in the wire. I upgraded split rings and trebles on a few lures and the blue water was the only lure that had hardware destroyed. But that was dragging a 4ft reef shark over the side. We got the lure back. I just put upgraded splits and trebles. We also found we didn't get a touch on the divers unless they were run at least 50m behind the boat. We used heavy bibles minnows too

[ALI-G]

Sweet,

Thanks heaps guys

[mr magoo]

to get the lures swiming faster remove the trebles and just run one single hook on the belly of the lure,depending on the hook you run you may need two split rings or just the one,

[brendong]

Xraps was all that our Fiji charter used from memory with singles.

[boattart]

Laser Pros and Xraps are the go if you want bibbed lures but if you want to troll a bit faster there area a lot of good bibles minnows that wahoo in particular love. Halco tremblers and Yozuri or River to Sea minnows are great and would be my first choice for wahoo. I've also just ordered a couple of Cutting edge bibbed minnows to try. Will let you know how they go.

Edited August 19, 2013 by boattart

[ALI-G]

Thanks chaps,

I have just discovered the Maria Deep snare lures too 5-9m depth and can troll at 6-12knots! Doesn't changing the hooks make them unbalanced? I can understand for poppers sliders etc but deep divers???

[ALI-G]

Just a quick tip, I was casting poppers but had powerpro depth hunter braid spooled on my reel and kept getting bitten off by toothy critters, I suppose they could see the markings on the braid moving through the water and were attacking it!

I lost 3 poppers and had no access to any more.

Next time I'll be using single colour braid!

Edited September 13, 2013 by ALI-G