Cod Fishing Trip, April 2009, with Yankee Clipper Gloucester
· Here are some of my notes regarding what seem to be the best approaches to catching Cod and Haddock from a head boat.
· Serious Cod Fisherman are using the following:
· Cod jigs which are specially rigged and include a teaser. See heavy Jigs up to 24onces in photos. Big jigs go down further and hold near the bottom better. The fish are on the bottom and up to 5 ft. in the water column so you need to be down there. Big heavy jigs keep you in the strike zone longer.
· In addition to the type of fly teaser in the photo (yellow feathered one) the guy next to me was using an orange “Mario Squid Strip” soft plastic as a teaser and that was working well too. One of the other guys with special Cod Rods was using a blue/black feathered teaser.
· Guys are using high speed reels (not sure of brand but they looked like the reels the Hook Up Guys use for Tuna jigging (Shimono??).....) or Penn 330s
· Line combinations were braided line with mono leader, or all mono, or 80 lb Dacron and a 30 foot mono leader.
· A guy I talked with on way in is a “black belt” on Cod fishing and uses 80lb Dacron with a 30 foot mono leader so he can feel the bottom and the bits. He said the bigger fish are more aggressive and go for the jigs and that in general the jigs catch way more fish than bait. I was definitely doing it wrong (with bait) especially the way my hooks were wrapping around the leader. All the black belt guys have their teasers rigged to stick straight out and use big chrome cod jigs on the terminal end of the rig.
· Note Black belt man in picture (see slide show) has a lot of hardware (swivels and such) in the “jig rig” and seems to be a doubling the line in one place as a shock leader.. It also looked like there was not swivel at the top where the “jig rig (which includes the teaser) was attached to the running line. However at the bottom there is a big swivel. Ask the tackle shops about this!
· His rod was some sort of a Penn rod. All the black belt guys seemed to be fishing with long rods...maybe as long as 8 ft. They also seemed to have some flex in them which enabled the guys to get the jigs tossed away from his boat and gave a little spring for jigging. (Not sure about the spring part but definitely long rods.)
· Miscellaneous note. Captain said the haddock have soft mouths and not to horse them in or you could pull the hook out.
Please comment and share your thoughts on this tackle and technique for cod fishing.
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