Amberjack tips

[sharkboy]

I normally don't target AJ's, but I'm thinking about hitting a couple of holes tomorrow that might hold some. If I find some, can anybody give me any tips that might increase my chance of hooking up?

[EddieJoe]

Yep. Use hardtails (blue runners) for bait. Pick them up on sabikis at the buoys, etc. For AJs, they will outfish just about anything else.

Of course, when AJs are hungry, they will take anything, lures, black sea bass, pins, any live white bait, even dead bait.

Put the runner down on a four foot 60-80 lb mono leader, about a 4-6 oz lead, and hook them with a 6/0 live bait hook at the dorsal fin. Drop them about 30 foot down real fresh and hot. If they are there and will take ANYTHING, they will take that runner.

You can also help by chumming them to you with a chum churn popping.
I have pulled up to K-tower with 8 boats on the tower, nobody catching anything, using dead bait and pins.

With a runner, hooked up within seconds. Everybody else watching, POed.
I catch a couple, pull them into the boat by the tail, keep one, move on.


EJ

[Tom Keels]

Yep, if you can't catch them on a blue runner, you can't catch them period.

If you are the first boat to a likely AJ site you can use a big topwater bait and chug them to the surface sometimes. White bucktail jigs and diamond jigs work well too. I for one have never caught them on cut bait.

However, that being said, right now you only have about a 5% chance of catching them on anything but a live bait. If you don't have blue runners, big cigar minnows, or big pinfish, you can just about forget it.

In the late winter I have caught them on stretch 30's trolled over the Yamaha.