Bluewater Lures

Good bluewater fishermen should ask three questions of every lure:
1. How will the lure run behind my boat?
2. What are the best conditions to run it?
3. Where should it go in the spread?

While most of these can be answered by simply looking at the shape of the lure's head, we recently spent time with two of the best big-gamers in the business, Ron Schatman and Dick Tanner, to get their take on lure basics.

Schatman, a charterboat captain since the '60s, started manufacturing lures in 1984. He has been at the helm for at least a dozen 700-plus-pound marlin, he won the Bahamas Billfish Championship in 2000, and he practically wrote the book on high-speed wahoo trolling in the Bahamas.

Tanner, tournament director for ESPN's Billfish Xtreme Release League, has fished with some of the best crews in the world and has been selling lures to tackle shops for about as long as Schatman has been building them.

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Flat Out
On a flat-faced lure, the leading edge is perpendicular to the fishing line pulling it, with no cup or dish. It is going to pull close to the surface""very straight and fairly hard""and pop a lot, throwing water in the air and pulling a trail of bubbles. "Run it low on the face of the wave where it's grabbing a lot," Tanner says. "And I wouldn't troll one when it's flat-calm. It won't get enough action."