Something new
 

:hang: Seeing I may have lots of free time on my hands soon, I was wondering about making a Sluggo daisy chain or bar. Has anyone here done it and have any suggestions?

Matt have you tried it? I guess the hardest part would be feeding the heavy duty mono right down the middle of the Sluggo. Also, what hook would you recommend?

By the way :claps: for this forum.

No, but I want to talk to Bob from Surfhog about some charturuse or white to run as singles WAY back in the canyons, after hearing about the success in cape cod bay!

I'm going to ask around at the RISAA show and see what I can find out. If not, we may have to organize a rigging demo before the tuna show up. I'll bring some beer! :gu:

Matt,
I have made them by running a main line and then running a tag forward 6 " connected with a crimp to the sluggo. The tag folds backwards pulling the sluggo. I'm not a big fan of it and they dont present as well as squid bars do.

Ig you wanted to run the line through the middle a 12" rigging needle would do the trick.

IMHO alot of work no return on investment.

There are other "tricks " with sluggos/softplastics that really boost catch rates.

Was at FO this weekend. If your interested, they are going to sell a sluggo bar this year. We had luck with singles last year. They are not hard to rig. Use a good quality tuna hook. We crimped or tied to 130 mono leader and push the connection into the sluggo to help with weeds.

KR;
when you guys are trolling them, I kept hearing way-back and slow (~4kt).. right?

I'm still trying to figure a way to rig them w/ enough weight to keep them in the water (even in the shotgun) at 7+kts. I still think out in the deep it will be a good way to pick off fish on slow days...

ROCK,

Our best luck has been way back on an outrigger,even slower 2-3kts. When rough we added an egg infront but even w/o skippin on the surface seemed to entice strikes. We got one yellow on them in the canyon trip we did also. One thing to note the shearwaters are a pain with them thou. They peck the tails off.

2.8-3.4 is usually the magical mark when pulling the plastic. Way way back has had the best success as well as putting them on a jig head sub surface. As stated above the birds can be a pain in the balls.

Every boat has its own sweet spot for trolling. Out in the canyons fishing for yellowfin, marlin, albacore, bigeye etc, typical trolling speeds are between 5 and 7 knots.

Matt - What are you using for jigheads?

I've got some of those owner 1 1/2 oz, that I know are popular, but they just seem suspect to me.

For the deep plastics either a Ronz head with the big Got Stryper baits or put an inline weight rubber core up ahead on the leader. Alans (Got Stryper has a new jig head that everyone will be using next year. 330lb Spro swivel with a owner 8/0 hook. Beefy and perfect for this application). The standard jig hooks open after a prolonged fight or a big fish pulling on it.

Thanks. I was using the Ron-Z's heads last season with his tails, but couldn't fit the heads on a sluggo.

I messaged Alan already about the rubber, I'll ask about the jigheads too.

The sluggo chains / bars are already in the fishermansoutfitter online catalog. I went up there this weekend for a rigging seminar. They also went over how to build a sluggo bar. Pretty informative. They sell some pretty cool "springs" for attaching the teaser sluggos to the bar. I would head up there if you are interested in building one......They are super helpful..

We were running a a 3oz. through holed trolling sinker about 4' infront of the sluggo. Worked well and the sluggo action isn't impaired by the jig head. We run 2 on the riggers onweighted and long and 2 weighted off rubber bands on the corners

We caught 2 birds last season, they are a real pain at times.

Making a bar of sluggos should be easy but keeping the blues off them won't.

I'm not sure you need more then one. We tried one that my son Jeff made. It swam fine, just don't think you need it. K.I.S.S. seems to work fine