Bounce Ball Questions

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by Aaron&Julie

Very similiar to what worked for Julie's women's record halibut, it was in about 10' feet of water, a 1oz chrome torpedo was all that was needed, on a floating Rapala mackerel pattern. She was using 12lb Maxima on the reel, I believe 15lb P-line leader from the 3-way to the lure, and 10lb or 12lb 3-way to the sinker. The 12lb line on the reel tested a little higher at the IGFA, so they listed it under the 16lb class category. As far as we know it is still holding up as the largest ever caught by a woman on any craft under any pound test line. We've caught many much, much smaller ones this way too, along with the ones where a bait hook and live sardine was substituted for the lure.

That's incredibly cool. I knew about that fish but never knew that she got it on a rapala. You can definitely get big fish fishing this way but that was a monster.

It's funny how things go in and out of fashion. This is really kind of an old timers trick.

I first learned about it from a early addition of "Fisherman's Digest" written in the 60s in which guys were using wire line, and rapalas, with 3-ways and sinkers for Lake Trout. I started doing something similar with mono for stripped bass on the Brazos and Red river in shallower water when I was a teenager in the seventies, and it was pretty effective. When I came out here I started using it for halibut, but I really got into it after spectra hit the market.

In Texas the hot lures were the Rebel spoonbill...



and the 7 inch CD10 Redfin.


I tried those first but never had much luck out here with the Rebel spoonbill.

The Cordell c10 works for butts especially when they want really big baits, and that lure is beefy enough for heavier line. I used to troll them right on the bottom with down-riggers. It has low drag and a good action at slow speeds so you can pull it from a yak, so I still sometimes fish them. It is actually a really good surface lure for Barracuda, Calicos, and I've even caught Yellows on them.

I like the X Raps because they are well built, and they do catch butts in the smaller sizes. They seem to work best when your moving a little faster, and don't have much action slow. Generally I use them when I'm trying to cover a of of ground at a faster speed, but switch to the standard Rapala's when fishing normally.

For halibut the anchovie sized standard floating rapalas just make sense in the white and silver patterns. They have good action at slow speeds and the fish really love them. Halibut just love Anchovies so it's no big surprise they like that bait.

What did surprised me was success of the CD9 Cordell. I always thought it was just junk and worthless but it's actually one of the better lures for halibut in the right conditions. It's really light and buoyant but dives hard so I think it covers more of the water column, floating up higher at stops then quickly diving down to the sand when you pull it. They probably think it's a scared bait-fish trying to hide on the bottom. All I know is it works.

Spectra has really changed the way you can fish these things. The deal is back in the day with mono you had to put out more line to get to the bottom, and use heavier weights, so though it was decent shallow, with it's stretch it was always hard to get a good hookset fishing with mono deep.

Wire is a pain to fish with and it has no stretch but I hate using it. Dacron was better for stretch but still almost as thick as mono.

With thin 20 pound spectra you can get away with smaller weights, fish with less line out, and with it's lack of stretch it's really easy to get a good hook set. So though fishing with rapalas and weights has always been a decent way to fish it's now much easier and more effective in deep water then it used to be.