Nothing Beats the Lowly Ballyhoo for Versatility

Nothing Beats the Lowly Ballyhoo for Versatility

THERE’S NO DOUBT THAT MORE BALLYHOO get dragged behind sport-fishing boats as dead bait than any other species. Ballyhoo are reasonably cheap, easy to rig and generally available, and although some concern has arisen over the status of ballyhoo stocks, they remain basically plentiful. This combination of virtues makes them the overwhelming bait of choice for many captains. It’s almost overkill to point out that nearly every predator in tropical and subtropical waters loves to eat them.

A lot of people swear by ballyhoo as trolled baits, but not that many get past the basic rigging stage. Some people just buy prerigged baits at the tackle store and never attempt rigging themselves. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but to truly harness the potential of the ballyhoo as an effective bait, it pays to do some homework and learn a few more-advanced rigging techniques. Diversifying your spread is usually a good idea. No matter what you typically fish for, some variation of the ballyhoo rig is sure to make your baits more effective. Regardless of the way you rig ballyhoo,

you should first prepare each by gently bending it back and forth to break its backbone, remove its eyes and gently run your thumb along its abdomen to empty its digestive system. The bill (on the ballyhoo’s lower jaw) should be trimmed short and evenly so it doesn’t dig in and make the bait spin. CIRCLE HOOKS Let’s start with the newest trend: rigging ballyhoo on monofilament or fluorocarbon leaders for trolling with circle hooks. Several different methods have emerged as captains around the world.

have shifted to using circle hooks. (In case you haven’t kept up, the circlehook debate centers on catching and releasing billfish.) Nonoffset circle hooks have been widely adopted as the hook of choice among billfish experts concerned about release mortality. Studies clearly indicate that circle hooks substantially lower the number of billfish killed accidentally in the recreational fishery, because these hooks tend to lodge in the corner of the fish’s mouth rather than in its stomach, even when the fish swallow baits during a long drop-back. Many fishermen use circles exclusively these days, and if you regularly target billfish with dead baits, you should make the switch as well. There’s simply no excuse not to. When this evolutionary change began, many anglers resisted because they worried that baits would be harder to rig and that hooking techniques would need to change. But it didn’t take savvy skippers long to figure out effective ways to rig ballyhoo on the new hooks, and the practice now seems commonplace. New drop-back techniques did become necessary, but these proved easy to master.