Trolling for Speedsters

Over the past few years I've often run a combination of skirts and shallow/deep hardbodoes in my spread of 3. I've only recently mounted the out-riggers so the spread will now move to 5. To date though I've had a much higher success rate with the hard bodies and my favourite right now is the X-Rap series which I am in the process of converting over to single hook rigs.

I've had a few fish caught in the centre spot in close with jet/hex heads but very little on the larger sized skirts. Even two years back when we had a cracker black bite they fell to livies fed back into bait balls as they wouldn't take the skirts trolled above.

So I am wondering what everyone is running and where they have had the most success and if teasers are really worth the extra effort or not.

As a general rule, it's hard to get skirts and hard bodies that like the same speed (in my opinion) you will get the skirts running well and catching fish, but the hard bodies are yanking the rod out of the holder, get the deep diver type of thing working well, then the skirts are not, it's not impossible of course, but you will need to fool around a bit with styles and distances and speed.

Oh, and teasers every time for me, don't know of its just habit or just makes me feel good, but I like the Pakula Witch Doctor thing, got all sorts of birds and stuff, but like the big flashy Pakula, it's looking pretty sad now, been hit a few times.

Try running your (deep) hard bodies in close and if you have smaller skirts run those out from the riggers. Like others have said, it is hard to tune a mixture of hardbody lures and skirts but I generally follow That formula and it works quite well. Skirts are Pakula Uzis, Hardbodies X-rap 30 or 40s

Gonna need a bigger boat, more crew. 5 lures, witchdoctor and a couple of birds. Love that mayhem on small boats when you get hit and there's not enough bodies on board to get all the gear in before you're spooled.
Good luck.

Mate normally if I'm prospecting I'll run a x-rap 30 on the short Cnr with the bird teaser above then a large skirt 9-10 inch of the long Cnr with the which doctor underneath then a 2m halco on the short rigger and a 6-8inch skirt on the long rigger that puts skirts on one side and hard body's the other I also track normally around 6-8knots works well for me solo hope this helps chief

Cheers Scott



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Have a look at the new Nomad range of hardbodies. Claimed troll at 12 knots and 12 mtrs and always swim straight. Got some the other day yet to try but look good a similar design to the Xrap but they take it to the next step.