Boring Underwater Fluke Video amidst all these Bluefin Tuna posts

[Arbutis]

Needless to say - I'd rather be pitching some poppers to breaking bluefin tuna - but alas, I am stuck in my river in 12 feet of water doing underwater fluke videos. What a dummy.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/18UBzc3wLlE

Well, maybe someone will enjoy...for educational purposes.

[Adrenalinerush]

Cool video, thanks

[Hanis]

Thank you for taking the time to capture and post such great local fluke footage ! Excellent job!!!

[Duffman]

Cool vid. No matter how many fluke vids I see I’m always amazed how far they will swim after a bait.

[Fin Reaper]

Very nice
Thank you

[Blind Archer]

Great video Doc. See you out there. BTW thanks for the killies a couple of trips ago.

[Skolmann]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Cool vid. No matter how many fluke vids I see I’m always amazed how far they will swim after a bait.

I always keep those videos in mind when bounce a bucktail...I keeps telling myself that one (or more) are right on it’s heals.

[HDMarc]

Any video showing the different ways they are hitting the baits help, nicely done

[Gerry Zagorski]

Great video and thanks for sharing it here.

[Arbutis]

After watching hours of footage from several trips I have made some observations. Here they are for what it's worth.

If you are fishing with a Wonder Rig or similar style 3-way rig setup - with a free swimming killie on top, the very second you feel the bite - set the hook! There is a lot of debate on this subject but when a fluke hits a killie they hammer it whole in one big gulp. Even 2 or 3 killies (small) on one hook - when they hit it - it's gone. Set the hook immediately.

If you are using a dead stick pole with a similar rig (and not feeling that initial bite) then every time you see the pole bend and flutter - that is the fluke opening his mouth and violently shaking to get the hook and bait out of his mouth. And very often it is successful.

A fluke will swim along with your bait in its mouth for a LONG time without much or any resistance. When you finally feel your pole bend and bob - that's the fish trying to shake out your bait and hook. So don't wait for that to happen. As soon as you feel the weight of a fish heavier than your bait - set the hook.

If you fish with long strip baits, bucktails with long gulp tails, etc. then you may want to wait longer to set the hook. Often the fluke will grab the back of a long strip and swim along with you gulping down more and more with each bite. This takes them longer to get to the hook so you need to wait.

This is going to sound crazy to most people but we have been cutting the hook off our bottom bucktails again recently - leaving just enough shank to put a plastic lizzard or gulp minnow on for attractant. With ~95% of the bites coming from the live killie, keeping the bucktail as weedless as possible keeps your bait in the water much longer. If a fluke happens to grab the bucktail and you set it - yanking it out of his mouth - he will stay with you and then eat the killie when he sees it.

The live kille on a long leader will swim high off the bottom - avoiding weeds and crap as much as possible. Let him do his thing.

The killie will see the fluke coming and go absolutely nuts trying to avoid it. You will feel this happening. No jig on earth can duplicate this and most fluke can't resist attacking this.

A lively killie can avoid many crab attacks.

A healthy big killie can still swim and stay lively even after being eaten up to 6 times. I watched a single killie get eaten and spit out by 2 fish, 6 times and still swim along with my hook through it's face. Remarkable.

Keep in mind that all the scenes you see in the video have a rig with a sizeable video camera being dragged in front of the rig. This is why it is not jigged up an down with any action. But it still results in this much action and follow up. The point here is that the fluke don't mind all that clutter. In fact they may prefer it. They are curious animals as we can see by how long they follow a bucktail before making a decision. They are very sight oriented.

Lastly - most of these observations are for early season river or bay fluke. Not ocean fluke as I have no data. It may be simialr. It is also my impression that larger fluke (23 in and up) hit hard and fast and come off the bottom where they have been waiting for a quick ambush strike - as opposed to the follow, follow, follow - hit! I see that with more of the smaller fish.

Hope this information helps someone become a better fluke fisherman. I've been fortunate to have been able to fish for fluke several times this season (probably 12 trips in the past month and a half) and on my boat we count all our fish as part of a fun fishing contest. We have caught between 30 and 60 fish on every trip with an average of around 9 keepers per trip. Not trying to brag but it has been a fun and productive season so far so I'm sharing the knowledge that I have been aquiring so that it might help someone who is just starting out or someone who just needs to try something different to be successful. We catch a lot of shorts and that's part of the game. But we're catching lots of fish and have almost non stop action on every trip. That's the fun for me.