June 30, 2006 - Cruisin' with Teasers
by Scott & Wendy Bannerot

What's a teaser? Why should anyone be interested in "cruising with a teaser"? A teaser is anything you tow behind the boat that makes a commotion, and the reasons for habitually towing them are a combination of factors. First, they can help you put fresh fish on the table. Second, the fishing bug might bite you, and you might decide you'd like to catch yourself a spectacular billfish, just to have the experience. Third, even if you don't have a hook in the water, you might enjoy the marvelous sight of an excited marlin, sailfish, or spearfish, possibly even a swordfish, swimming excitedly behind your boat for a few minutes.

Teasers come in all shapes and sizes. My personal all-time favorite is the bowling pin teaser called "Lulu" made by Boone - this teaser thrashes, wiggles, and dives, driving all kinds of fish crazy. Unless you want to make your own, buy one of these for $25 and you'll never look back. Multiple-bait teasers, like the spreader bar above, are very effective for tuna and for sailfish.

Teasers by definition don't have hooks, so you aren't going to hurt anything by towing one, but you will definitely attract fish of all sizes to your wake. If all you want is something small and manageable, run a small trolling lure 10 feet in back of your teaser. Wahoo, tuna, mahi mahi, assorted mackerels, and a host of other species will come racing in to inspect the erratic action of the teaser, spot the small offering, and swing off and strike it, since they're already worked up. So teasers aren't just for bringing up, or raising, billfish - they raise everything.

You want to know something interesting that's happening to growing numbers of previously "pure" sailors? They're getting excited about fishing, and I don't mean just running a handline on a snubber for eating fish. They're saying to themselves, "If many people are willing to pay small fortunes to experience catching these billfish, there must be something to it. Now if I have this available to me 'for free', for merely the price of a single trolling outfit with the strength, drag, and line capacity required to catch large fish, why not give it a try?" I've got sailing friends who now fish relentlessly for billfish while underway. Kids go crazy over the experience...the thrill of close-hand views of these amazing predators, not to mention all of the stories they can tell. Some sailors are even entering billfish tournaments held in the ports they visit. One tournament in Jamaica even has a sailboat division!

This is the view straight down from atop our transom arch, providing a panoramic view of the aft deck of Elan. Note the teaser reel clamped to the rail at the upper left. This is a Penn Senator 12/0, a relatively inexpensive big game reel that we use to deploy teasers and also to troll small lures. That's a barbecue under the cover next to the teaser reel, Aries wind vane, scuba tank rack, welded rod holders, folding dive ladder that you can walk up with fins on, and, to the right, a fish cleaning table that folds down.

Just in case you'd like to do it, let's take a quick look at how to run teasers. It's very easy. You can simply tie on any available line and run the teaser back say 15 or 20 feet at the most behind the boat, and cleat off the line. A somewhat neater way of doing it is to clamp a trolling reel to the aft rail and attach the teaser via snap swivel to the end of the line. Use at least 200-pound test monofilament for the running line, and set the drag fairly light so nothing will break off the teaser.

Guess what else the billfish aficionados are using for teasers these days? Dock fenders! Someone must've deployed one on a rope or something - one of those white, cylindrical fenders with an attachment point at either end - and it sucked under the surface and skittered and thrashed and raised havoc. Believe it or not, tackle companies now mold their own "fender teasers", and they come in all sorts of realistic colors. Another teaser is simply a section of 2 X 4 cut on an angle at the end, and nowadays they glue a section of mirror to it for more flash. Other designs sport large cylinders of plastic or rubber, and a bushy tail or skirt made of assorted hair-like materials in all kinds of bright colors. The only limit to making your own teaser is your imagination. And what better project for the kids on board, something as fun and functional as a teaser?

Here's a close-up of that Penn Senator 12/0 clamped to the aft rail, loaded with 200-pound test monofilament, with a snap swivel attached to the end of the line (that's the snap you can see attached to the cross bar on the right side of the reel).

We get into all of this and much more in The Cruiser's Handbook of Fishing (2000, 2004 by Scott Bannerot & Wendy Bannerot, International Marine, a division of McGraw-Hill Companies). We also welcome you to stop by www.scottbannerot.com. We recommend checking out all of the teasers available at Capt Harry's Fishing Supply (www.captharry.com), and if you're going to buy just one, I don't think you can go wrong with a Boone Lulu (in bonito or mahi mahi color).