scottd

Has anyone been pulling Williamson(artificial) ballyhoo? If so, any luck? Thanks,

ajfishn

I had luck a couple of months ago at the rigs pulling a blue/white Ilander with a fake ballyhoo, but that day they were biting everything. I have not tried it since.

Jake

dpewitt

sent this on another post too. I used them for a few years (up until selling boat) with good success. The ones already rigged work pretty well, but I would recommend getting the ones with that are not rigged (both blue and black) and use them behind illanders. The best hook I found to fit was a 7/0 Mustad. Run your leader line through the illander, then nose cone on the ballyhoo (make sure and useanosespring between illander and ballyhoo). Run the line down and through the belly to the second/last opening then push line out. crimp on your hook then feed this back through the ballyhoo until the hook is snug in the belly. This takes a little practice, but you can pre-rig these easy and they work great. One note, I would put a small rubberband around the ballyhoo about mid lingth to keep the hook snug in the belly and make sure it runs straight. Small tip, but really makes a huge difference. Use the blue ones with blue/white illander and the black ones with darker color illanders. I fished these numerous times against real ballyhoo in the same spread and these worked as well if not better than the real thing plus much easier to work with. Just my $.02.

Wild Injun

I started using them some during tournaments since the real ballyhoos had to have circle hooks in them and my catch rate on circle hooks and billfish is pretty poor. They pull well and we have caught some meat fish on them but no billfish I would definately give them a try.

true-king

I bet the hookup ratio is good since the hook is placed farther back.

Chris V

We pull a spreader bar of them tight to the transom and it doesone hel of a job of bringing fish in. We lost about 4 of the 'hoos off of it last week going through schools of blackfin. They were crashing all over it just 20ft from the transom and continued to hit it all the way up to the boat.

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