| Yellowtail
caught on a sliding sinker rig, Punta Chivato. |
| We
use sliding egg sinkers for two things in Baja--making trolling
hoochies and fishing with live mackerel or caballitos for yellowtail
and occasionally white seabass. For live-bait fishing, we use 2- or 3-oz. eggs, depending on current, wind and where the fish seem to be holding. Just thread the sinker onto your main line--or, if you're using one, your leader--and then tie on your hook. This super-simple rig can be absolutely deadly on yellowtail. It obviously gets your bait down deeper than a flylined bait, but at the same time it allows the bait more mobility than a heavier dropper-loop type rig. The minimum amount of weight we use on a dropper-loop is 4 oz. The idea of a dropper loop is to put the bait at a specific depth--usually just above the bottom--and keep it there. Less than about 4 oz. allows a typical mackerel or caballito to swim around quite a bit, which, with a dropper-loop, tends to result in tangles and twists. A 2- or 3-oz. egg, on the other hand, lets your bait cruise around in the water column a fair amount and get well away from the boat, but with fewer connections and no branching lines, it's essentially foul-proof. At the beginning of a day fishing for yellowtail in the Cortez, we often start with one bait on a flyline, one on a sliding sinker rig and one a dropper-loop. That way, we cover most or all of the water column. When (if) a pattern become apparent, we switch over all lines to the type of rig that's getting bit. |
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1/2-oz. sliding
egg sinkers, 5-pack OUT |
 |
3/4-oz. sliding
egg sinkers, 5-pack OUT |
 |
2-oz. sliding
egg sinker, single $0.75 each (ship weight .15 lbs.) |
 |
2-oz. sliding
egg sinker, 8-pack $5.50/8-pack (ship weight 1 lb.) |
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3-oz. sliding
egg sinker, single $1.00 each (ship weight .20 lbs.) |
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3-oz. sliding
egg sinker, 5-pack $4.75/5-pack (ship weight 1 lb.) |
Torpedo Sinkers
| We
use torpedo sinkers mainly for dropper-loop and reverse dropper-loop
rigs when fishing deep for yellowtail, Pacific bottomfish and sometimes
pinto bass. For yellowtail, we almost always use either a 4 or
6/6.5-oz. sinker. Four ounces is about right to get a mackerel or
caballito down 150 to 250 feet on a calm day. Six works better when the
wind or current starts to pick up. We've tried using 8 ounces of lead on a dropper rig for yellowtail on windy days, but never done very well. It seems like if you need more than 6 or 6.5 ounces to get down to where the fish are, you're not going to get them anyway. And with anything less than 4 ounces, you're better off using a sliding egg sinker (see above). More than 6 ounces of lead is often necessary when fishing for Pacific bottomfish with live or cut bait, but it just doesn't make much sense to mail-order the heavier sinkers. Postage starts to cost more than the product itself. We use the 2-oz. torpedos mainly for making bait in water less than 50 feet deep. Some people like a heavier sinker on the bottom of a bait rig, but we think the 2-ouncers give you a little better feel for bites. Obviously when the bait is down 250 feet, you need more lead. Two-ounce and 4-ounce torpedos come in 2-packs. Six-and-a-half-ounce torpedos are sold individually. You won't find lower prices on torpedo sinkers anywhere. |
 |
Torpedo Sinkers,
2-oz., 2-pack $1.50/2-pack (ship weight .25 lbs.) |
|
Torpedo Sinkers,
4-oz., 2-pack $2.45/2-pack (ship weight .5 lbs.) |
 |
Torpedo Sinker,
6.5-oz., Single $1.75 each (ship weight .4 lbs.) |
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