Wire leaders for blackfin tuna????

"Ron M." wrote in message
oups.com...
Several times, I've been on charters off the Texas coast when we ran
into a school of blackfin tuna, mostly in the 10-30 pound range. What
normally happened was, the crew would throw out a couple handfuls of
sardine chunks, then immediately free-line a whole sardine into the
chum. It would get hit almost instantly, and then they'd hand the rod
to a guest. They used 3 rods at a time; they couldn't have 15 guests
all hooked up at once; it'd be a tangled mess.

The rigs were freelines... just a tuna hook tied directly to the end
of the mono, nothing else.

The problem was, at least half the time the blackfin would bite through
the 50# mono and the crew would have to reel it in, tie on another
hook, etc. They used a HUGE amount of time doing this, sometimes
getting 5 ot 6 biteoffs in a row before finally hooking one.

My question: is there any particular reason why they don't use a fine
wire leader, to prevent so many biteoffs? These tuna were 10-30
pounds, and a 20# leader would be plenty strong and very fine. I don't
know why it wouldn't work, but these guys were seasoned pros, and knew
what they were doing. Any comments out there?

Ron M.

Tunas, and their smaller relatives have extremely keen eyesight and won't
hit
a bait with a wire leader. At least that was the thinking years back. Don't
know
if current technology has solved this issue.

Interesting.... I got an email from Mark Sosin. He said blackfins
can't bite through 50# mono. They can't even bite through 20# mono. He
said there were probably other fish in the water biting them off, like
kings - there were some kings being caught - but not the tuna.

Ron M.