A flopper is a dead skipjack with its mouth sewn shut, trolled slowly so it flops across the surface like a wounded fish. A marlin that rises on it thinks another marlin scared the bait away and takes its place. It should flop flat; if it spins, the hook isn't centered.

Why do Kona boats run only four lines?

Fewer lines clear faster. With four lures and no dredge or shotgun, the crew clears one line and the captain runs after a big fish right away. Kona crews also turn hard when their 360 degree sonar marks fish, and a center line would tangle the spread on a 90 degree turn.

Blue Marlin Fishing Tactics: Finding Fish, Gear and Drag

Blue marlin fishing starts with the current: marlin feed where it runs into a ledge, seamount or bank and lifts bait toward the surface, and they scatter when it runs along the structure or switches direction. Crews then troll four or five lures over that water at about 7.5 to 9 knots, and some tease fish up and switch them to a dead bait at 5.5 to 6.5. Most fish 50 to 130 lb tackle and keep the fight close.

These blue marlin fishing videos follow the decisions some of the top crews in the world make offshore: reading current and structure, setting the spread, teasing and switching, driving the boat, and fighting big fish on 50 and 130 lb tackle, from island ledges and offshore pinnacles to the edge of the continental shelf.

The fish is the same everywhere; how crews find and catch it is not. Hawaii gets its own breakdown in Kona marlin fishing on the ledges.

Looking for something else in the library?

Marlin Lure Rigging VideosHeads, skirts, hooks and how each lure is rigged to swim Blue Marlin, the Fish ItselfHow it hunts, what it eats and where it travels

How blue marlin fishing changes by fishery, from In The Spread's blue marlin fishing videos
Fishery	Where the fish are	What the crew reads	Main method	Speed	Spread
Kona, Hawaii	The 100 to 200 fathom ledges close to the island, 1,000 fathoms about three miles out, and the ko'a, rips in the ledge found by lining up cinder cones	Current running in to the ledge at half to three quarters of a knot; 80 to 82 F; blue purple water; three to five birds; porpoise schools with marlin behind	Trolled lures, including six and nine inch bullets that big fish eat; live bait only where bait has held on a ledge for days	Set by how each lure swims, on a straight track with the engines synced	Four lines and a tuna silhouette teaser on wave two; no dredge, no shotgun
Pacific Costa Rica	A pinnacle about 40 miles out, its drop off into deep water, and any log that has drifted long enough to hold tripletail, skipjack and rainbow runners	Upwelling swirls and current slicks off the pinnacle; birds working; skipjack rolling. Green water still produces	Hookless teasers, then a pitched mackerel or ballyhoo; dead flopping skipjack before live bait	7 to 9 knots with teasers; 5.5 to 6.5 with floppers out	Two teasers with floppers behind them and pitch rods rigged and ready
Pacific El Salvador	An edge on the continental shelf off the coast, worked with a full lure pattern	The sea: a head sea dirties the prop wash, a down sea cleans the pattern up, and every lure gets reset to its wave	Trolled lures with a teaser on its own rod, and a rigged dead bait ready to pitch to a fish it raises	7.8 to 8.8 knots, maybe 9	Five lures on waves two, three, four, five and seven: the biggest, darkest on the short corner, the smallest on the shotgun