That's My Story

FISH ATTRACTING DEVICES – Published April 05 – WESTERN OUTDOOR NEWS

I don’t think there’s any question that fishermen have to be the most inventive doodlers around. Considering that our quarries, more or less, have brains the size of a nut, it’s amazing the amount of human brain power we apply toward fooling them with every gadget imagineable. Just check out any good fishing magazine or better yet, turn to the section on “bass lures” in your latest Bass Pro catalog. Oh my…just how many wiggly types of worms can we come up with and each season? Just go to any tackle store or outdoor trade show and someone has the newest and latest “can’t miss” thing-a-ma-bob. The funny thing is that some of these things actually work.

Well, if you ever really want to see fishermen’s grey matter at it’s apex, just put some fishermen around a campfire or firepit after a good meal. Add beverages and a sunset and a few good pull-my-finger-jokes and we can’t help but think of new ways to catch fish. It can get even worse in Baja where we all know huge critters are just lurking right off the beach. We can’t help ourselves. We are genetically programmed to build better mouse (fish) traps.

It was at one of these “strategy session” when I was working on the East Cape that I mentioned FADs (Fish Attracting Devices) that are used back home in Hawaii and in many places around the world. These are artificial floating things that fish tend to congregate around, much like kelp paddies can be magnets for you southern California anglers. With so many fish in the Sea of Cortez, why hadn’t someone erected FADs “out there?”

The owner of the hotel I was working at, happened to in on the conversation and himself an avid fishermen, we hit upon brilliance. We found some scrap sheets of busted up plywood. We drilled numerous holes in it. Using a staple gun we attached numerous strands of old rope, hoses, cloth, sticks and even some strands of his wife’s silk ivy plant he always hated. Ta-da…when floating upside down, we had instant artificial kelp paddies. Boy, were we gonna get ‘em.

The next day, I set these out in various places around the bay, three in all. Over the next two days, sure enough, we found dorado, skippies and roosters hiding in them and we figured we had really hit on something. Unfortunately, someone else “hit” it too when a neighbor, coming in late, cranked into one of our FADs and bent his prop in the dark. He wasn’t too happy and I was sent by my boss to “get those stupid things outta the water!” Of course, it was my fault for having ever conceived of such a ridiculous thing.

I never thought much about it again until recently fishing with one of my skippers in an area where we had been getting dorado, but the fish had been scattered. They had been pounded for weeks by heavy fishing traffic and weren’t schooling up. We a started the day by catching a few bonito which I knew would be stripped and used to slow troll for the mahi. However, this time, I saw my skipper cut off whole side slabs of the bloody fish. He then produced several bleach bottles from below the deck. Each bleach bottle had a length of rope attached to it. To each rope, he tied a chunk of bonito and tossed it over the side. Ah-hah!

Over the course of the day, we slow trolled bonito strips and live sardines in and out of the area, but at least once an hour we’d cruise by the floating bleach bottles which could easily be seen! Almost invariably, there would be a dorado or two swimming around the bottles attracted by the oily fish and actually taking occasional bites out of the chunk. Once we even had a striped marlin come up and wack at the bait and the bottle, but he wouldn’t go. Nevertheless, tossing a few sardines or dragging a thin strip of hooked bonito through the area was all it took to get the dorado going. Instant biters! .

At the end of the day, we collected our bleach bottles and took the happy clients back to the beach. No doubt for a good dinner; a fire; and more ideas on how to make a better mouse trap!

That’s my story…

Jonathan