| For
school-size yellowfin tuna, say up to 40 or 50 lbs., there is no more
effective trolling lure than a 6" unpainted cedar plug. Well, there
probably is, but we certainly haven't found it. Time after time, it's
the cedar plug(s) in our spreads that get knocked down first. If
the tuna are going to bite a trolled
lure -- and sometimes they're not -- they'll bite a 6" cedar plug. Albacore will eat cedar plugs too, and so will dorado sometimes, but we've never seen a cedar plug outcatch Zuker's-style feathers for albies or hoochies for dorado. It certainly doesn't hurt to throw a cedar plug in your albie spread, but they're basically yellowfin lures. Frankly, there's nothing terribly special about our Sea Striker cedar plugs; they're just the ones we've always used. They come rigged with a 10/0 hook and a 3-foot leader of 130-lb. mono finished with an offshore loop and a big barrel swivel. Unpainted plugs work so well that we've never used the painted ones. But we've gotten several requests for black-purple plugs, so we decided to carry those too. |
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6" Cedar Plug, Rigged $8.50 each $6.50 (ship weight .20 lbs.) Two black-purple left, out of unpainted. |
Zuker's ZF Trolling Jigs, Unrigged or Rigged
| Zuker's
colors, left to right: zucchini (with "grass" skirt), Mexican flag,
black-purple, black-green. |
| The
classic Zuker's 6-1/2" trolling jig is our go-to lure for albacore and
a close second to a cedar plug for schoolie yellowfin tuna. Dorado will
hit a Zuker's, but they show a marked preference for hoochies.
SevenStrand Tuna Clones are another popular option, but we like the
Zukers, with their resin heads and embedded prism tape, a bit better. By a wide margin, black-purple with a silver head has put more albies on our boats than any other color. But that might be because there's always at least one of them in the spread. Occasionally, we've found that green-black with a dark head gets bit better, and on bright days (unusual on the albacore grounds) we mix in a Mexican flag or two. The zucchini jig, which has a "grass" skirt (looks like fibers from an unraveled lawn chair) is a perennial favorite with the San Diego albacore crowd. Standard-rigged Zukers come with a 6-foot, 80-lb. Izorline mono leader and a #24 Mustad 7897DT double hook crimped to the leader. The leader is finished with a crimped offshore loop. Stealth-rigged Zukers come with a 6-foot, 60-lb. Izorline fluorocarbon leader and a #24 Mustad 7897DT double hook tied to the leader with a 3-turn double uni-knot. The leader is finished with a double perfection loop. |
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Zuker's Trolling Jig, Unrigged $9.00 each $6.50 (ship weight .15 lbs.) |
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Zuker's Trolling Jig, Standard Rigged $12.00 each $9.50 (ship weight .20 lbs.) |
| |
Zuker's Trolling Jig, Stealth Rigged $15.00 each $12.50 (ship weight .20 lbs.) |
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