DOUBLE TEAM TEASERS
Originally Published Week of April 14, 2010 in Western Outdoor News
Ever have one of those days when the fish are there, but are just “this close” to biting. You can see them. They’ll boil. You see the swirls. You throw a lure or a bait. You have followers.
At first they go after it like a kitty chases a ball of string, but just as they are ready to bite and your adrenaline and pulse are escalating…closer…closer…closer…they swim away like they had just smelled stinky week-old socks!
The worst is when you’re working a lure and the fish follows it all the way back to the boat or panga…whether conventional, spinning or flyfishing…and at the last moment, BOOM…it swims away because you just had no more room to crank. The lure was at the boat already. If you only had another 5 more feet of reeling or stripping room.
But no matter what, the fish won’t go. Won’t chew. Won’t bite. Lockjaw. Dangit.
Hate a tease. Especially when it’s a fish and it’s tiny pea- brain is frustrating me as the master hunter-gatherer with my armament of fishing weaponry!
Tease back.
I learned this from a bass fishing buddy of mine who had fished all over the world, and was an incredible angler whether fishing for dorado to bat rays or salmon to surf perch. He had caught so many bass in his time that he had made a hobby of catching the bass…not hooking them…but just getting them to bite!
He figured he was going to release the fish anyway and the biggest jolt of fun was enticing their crafty little demonic minds to bite something that sometime didn’t look like anything they would want to eat. So, he’d take the hooks off his lures or file off almost the whole hook shaft when he couldn’t.
And he’d go play. And he’d go around all over just trying to make fish bite.
Years ago when I fished with him and the fish were playing games, he said, “let’s tag team.”
Using a spinning rod, I would cast out poppers and spinner baits…pretty much anything noisy and splashy. Nothing had hooks. He’d do the same. Cast and reel as fast as we could. Make lots of commotion.
He’d have our panga skipper toss a few baits. At first, the fish (at the time uncooperative roosters) would do their chase-and-sniff thing. But the more we kicked up the water racket, the more aggressive the roosters got.
Closer and closer. Faster and faster. Either out of hunger or frustration, the roosters couldn’t help themselves and would start knocking the lures and eating the baits.
That’s when the hooks came back out (albeit no barbs and no triples) and the fish literally fought to grab either a bait or lure. All the time, one person continued to spank the water with a hookless lure and cause commotion.
Over the years, he proved it to me with other Baja species as well including dorado, tuna, cabrilla, snapper and pargo. He claims he’s tried it on salmon, trout, bass, perch and it has worked for me as well over the years.
“It’s the willingness for one guy to play the ‘teaser’ while the other guys fishes,” he told me. “Take one for the team, so to speak.” Then switch places. “It’s about making the fish think that there’s a feed going on and they better get in on it. All that splashing. If they don’t get the meal, some other fish will get it and it’s a competitive feeding world below the surface,” he theorized.
Big game anglers who troll alot of used the philosophy for years. They’ll troll teasers that flash, dance and skip through the waters in the wake of the boat or pull numerous dancing “birds” or “squid” lures behind the boat in various patterns. When the big boy shows up whacking at the teasers, an angler drops back a live hooked bait and the fish can’t help but charge the “real” meal.
It’s sportfishing’s version of bait and switch. Or switch and bait!
Jonathan Roldan is the Baja Editor for Western Outdoor News and can be reached directly at riplipboy@tailhunter-international.com
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