Sailfish Fishing Lures and Rigs

A rigged ballyhoo is the most reliable trolled bait for sailfish, and naked ballyhoo work as well as skirted ones. Where anglers target sailfish specifically, live bait — ballyhoo or goggle-eyes — fished under a kite or on a drift is the other standard. Both work for the same reason: they look alive at low speed.

Hook the bait and slide the lure on. A TrollTrue rig replaces the pin rig entirely — there are no pins, wire wraps or rubber bands, and the keel weight keeps the bait upright instead of rolling. Rigging comes in monofilament, fluorocarbon or 7-strand wire, and the trailer hook can be a circle hook.

Usually not. Sailfish do not have the teeth to cut through mono the way kings and wahoo do, and they are leader-shy in clear water, so most anglers run monofilament or fluorocarbon. Wire is worth having on the boat if the same spread might raise a king or a wahoo.

Yes. A TrollTrue rig uses two hooks and they do different jobs: the trailer hook is the one that lands the fish, and the nose hook is there to hold the baitfish — the same job the pin does in a pin rig. That means the trailer can be a circle hook, which is what makes a clean release possible. Order it that way through Custom Rigging. The nose hook stays a live bait hook, because that is the hook that fits the lure.

Sailfish often respond best to a naked bait.  The silver/gray color is designed to mimic a naked bait.  Green/yellow and pink/blue are the opposite perpsective and can work for sailfish as well.

Slowly — a rigged ballyhoo pulled just fast enough to make it swim. The full range by bait and species is in best offshore trolling speed by bait and species.

Nothing, at first — he came into the spread because he is interested in it. When he slaps the bait with his bill, drop it back for five to ten seconds before coming tight. The whole sequence is in how to catch sailfish when one shows up in your spread.