Ordered my stuff from Archer

[Captain Curt]

I moved this thread to it's proper location. That's all...........carry on.

Curtis.......

The boat Hanna..........

[Jaydog]

I too do not alway's see eye to eye with Sr. Archer but I will be giving his product a go around this season. When I remain open minded good things happen.

[Lamna]

Fuckna I sound like a broken record... you guys down there will just never learn... Freds bars kick ass! Ive been using them for years. Last year really drove the point home for me. We outfished the other boats (albacore) in my harbor on every trip- and by a very wide margin. The other boats had a lot of time to watch us and take pics at least! lol

Give the bars a fair chance and you will never fish without them. Even when the bars arent getting bit- leave them in the water- at days end you will have more fish. Im convinced- they kick ass for me. I usually run 2-3 at a time.


Where's my downrigger??? hahahaha

[shinerunner]

still anxiously awaiting...........

[Fred Archer]

Jeezum, looks like even when someone else starts a thread on another forum, it can't be allowed to stay there if me or my stuff is involved in any way, shape or form. Funny, it's okay though if it's free information that took a lot of hard work and time on my part, like the butchering stuff, Toad Teasers and a lot more. I guess I should feel lucky that I am allowed to mention what book it came from without it, too being sent back to my little room here like a bad little boy's nasty. Ah, well, no sense complaining. I'll figure something out on my own.

Captain Curt, I request that you remove my shark butchering post from the Chit Chat Forum if you have not already done so. I'm sure that you wll gladly comply, and fast. After all, it does mention a book and we need to keep the Fred Archer Spam Ban in full effect. It will be fine here.

Thanks again, Phat.

Jaydog, that's all I ask for, that you give it a shot. I respect doubters with open minds and the willingness to see things for themselves. Got a surprise for you because of that. Sometimes it pays not to be a motor-mouthed, no brainer jibble jabbler.

Billspen, just email me at fredarcher@cox.net and I'll get your catalogs out to you. Meantime, be sure to take a look at the bars running in the video on this thread...those happen to be KILLER models up and down the west coast and right into The Baja. And, no lie, they are over ten years old!

sdfishkiller Understood on trying to make your own...that's how SuperBars got invented. I admire do-it-yourselfers, which is why we sell "naked" bars. The metal ones just didn't come close to cutting it and anyone who has used both will confirm that. I spent three years looking for the right material to make the bars out of. I did. I never found anything else that could come remotely close, which I why the bars are guaranteed for life and can be fished on everything, right up to 130, no restrictions. You break it, I replace it. Haven't had to do that once in fifteen years.

I'm not taking a potshot at the metal bars, just being honest. I don't want their performance to cause people to think that all spreaderbars are like them. Please go take a look at the vid if you haven't seen it.

Lamna, thanks for the comments about and pictures of how the bars performed for you. The few dumb shits will holler "Foul!", or "Fix!" or some kind of crap like that, but that's okay. Fact is, this is obviously going to be the Year of the SuperBar in SoCal. A LOT of locals are getting them and you KNOW what's going to happen when they wiggle them around the fish! Looks like it's only going to be mostly The Peanut Gallery that's going to be left behind. Oh well, SuperBars are visual as hell, to the boys from The Gallery will see what's going on around them and they can, umm, lesseee, they can, uhhh, WATCH, oh year, watch. Might be less fun than it sounds, eh? And you and the other BarHeads out there KNOW that's going to happen!

By-the-way, awesome articles in Pacific Coast Sportfisherman mag. You have a lot of talent and a bright future as an outdoor writer, young fellow. I hear from the grapevine that a major national/international magazine is hunting you down for some work. Terrific!

Oh, and shinerunner, I'm not clear on whether you are waiting for something from me or not. If I've messed up, please forgive. Send me an email if I have and I'll try to fix it.

Carl OK

[MikeyLikesIt]

.

[Baja Rattler]

I bought his book "Modern Tuna Trolling" years ago.
Put his tactics into practice and have been kicking butt on fish from Cabo to N.Cal for years.

Sure have made me a better fisherman!
John

[Fred Archer]

Rattler,

Thanks! Glad the book helped. That's really what it's all about, the good vibes from hearing that I might have helped someone catch more fish.

A good choice in your picture with the big dorado. It is a ProBar. The other is a bar that you built on your own from one of our naked bars. And that rascal worked, too! Good job rigging it up!

Yes, the lures and how one uses them are important, but no matter what, knowledge is the key to success. I do not have a lot of time left to pass on the things that I have been so lucky to have learned on the water for far more days than most could ever even dream about and from some of the greatest fishermen to walk the face of this earth. Those who want it, can get it, but it ain't gonna be like it used to be for me around here.

Just check in here once in while, because once in a while, I might post some things that don't appear on the other clean and organized forums.

And this is one forum where the moderator or anyone else won't attempt to provide little, bitty answers on a given technique like, say shark fishing. The expression "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" was never more true than when it comes to shark fishing. So, instead of just giving up a little bit to someone new to sharking, I will not hesitate to recommend that the first thing that person should do is to sit down and read a book about it that covers the entire game, not just a tiny bit of it.

Yes, I've written more books on shark fishing than any other author ever, and probably more for the big, national and local magazines as well. So yes, when it comes to that game, I will be recommending my books. But I'll tell you something, folks, if anyone else on this board or anywhere else wrote a book on a certain kind of fishing, I would recommend reading it long before I started offering them bits and pieces of information on my own. And if I did offer up information that I had learned from a book or article by someone, I'd credit them for it.

'Course, that's just me.

A little California shark fishing history. A bit more than 15 years ago, sharks were considered trash fish by 99% of the fishermen here. And what we know as mako sharks today were universally called "bonito sharks" and the prevailing wisdom was that they didn't get much over fifty pounds. The vast majority of the small number of those "bonito sharks" that got caught were taken on marlin lures by marlin fishermen. Threshers? There was no fishery for them whatsoever, except for a few secretive fishermen up in Santa Monica Bay, who caught and illegaly sold the small threshers that were present up there each spring. Prior to 1993, if a thresher was caught by a sport fisherman, it was big news that was reported on in the mainstream media.

In the late 80's, Shimano moved their headquarters to Orange County from New Jersey. The head of the Fishiing Tackle Division was a fellow named Fred Archer. Archer knew of the true identity of the "bonito sharks" and that where there was one thresher, there were more, but that because of their feeding habits, they were literally uncatchable by So Cal anglers and that virually none had the right kind of big game tackle and knowledge of it for the threshers anyway.

And so came the first shark fishing seminars on the West Coast. They were called "The Shimano Sharking Series" and they were held in various venues from L.A. to San Diego. The outline, format and instructive text for those seminars were prepared by Fred Archer, who also instructed at each of them. The entire emphasis at that time was on chumming. Shark fishing began to take off big time after that.

Meantime, Archer and a fellow named Joe Scott set out to figure out how to catch thresher sharks and to figure out what kind of lures it would take to catch them and how they should be fished. They did. Among the lures that they found effective was one from South Africa called "The Baitomatic", which Archer code named, "The Indian" in what was to appear later. In 1993, the original "Thresher Shark Book", only the second book ever written about shark fishing, was published and was joined by the third one of the time, Shark Chummer's Bible.

Anyone who was around at that time can tell you what happened - and should...People used the techniques and tackle and lures in the book and they started hammering the threshers! There were weekend days when fuel docks and weigh stations that had never before even weighed a single thresher, weighed fifty or more on one day. And making a long story short, the threshers became the number one big game fish in California, and one that just about anybody, regardless of the size of their boat, could go after and catch.

The Thresher Shark Book went through five printings before it was updated and replaced by The Shark Troller's Bible in 1999. It too went through numerous print runs before it was replaced by The New Shark Troller's Bible that was published 2005 that is the single most detailed book on shark trolling ever written. It includes detailed information on the entire shark trolling game, not just bits and pieces of it. Anyone planning to take up trolling for threshers and/or makos should read that book, as should other shark fishermen who have not read it.

I am very proud of the guiding hand that I had in the development and growth of shark fishing here and in other areas and I am overjoyed to see so many people enjoying it and even moreso, that so many are restricting their kills and releasing most of their threshers. I don't talk about this much. In fact, this is the first time that I have ever written about it. I don't want to be taken as a braggert and I figure that if people know, they will say. But whether they do or not, the facts are the facts.

Knowing all of this, and it is the absolutely truthful, abbreviated history of shark fishing here, perhaps the few people who read this will pause for a moment and wonder why it is that those who give out partial advice on shark fishing, some of which is spot on and some of which is terribly wrong, and none of which is complete, never seem to give credit where credit is due in the first place, and then do what is right in the second place and instead of adopting an "expert" stance and giving out the above, never even say, "here's what I think on your question, but if you are going to get into shark fishing, get a good book on it that covers everything from A to Z and study it before you begin. Do not fail to do that and remember, knowledge is the key to success...and safety too when it comes to shark fishing! ESPECIALLY SAFETY!"

That sure makes me wonder about those people and whether they have an ego problem of some kind, or if something else is wrong. Of course, maybe they didn't know the history of shark fishing and maybe they didn't know that there are very large and detailed books that cover every aspect of the sport, written by, of all people, the guy who started it all, and a member of the team here. That would surprise me, but if that was indeed the case, they know now.

I wonder what they'll do about it?

Hey, did you guys notice the spreaderbar in the picture of that daytime swordfish I was butchering? (a long way from my first to cut, by-the-way...I wrote a book about how to do that and how to catch them, too, not that it matters or that I could talk about it outside of my little, dark room here.) There was an interesting side note, a couple of them, actually, that happened that some here might be interested in.

First, I was doing the butchering of that fish because I had taught a frustrated charter captain who couldn't catch a daytime sword after years of trying, one of my ways the day before. I also lent him one of my swordfish rigs all rigged up and ready to go. He was excited, but I could tell that he wasn't convinced as he went out the door, so I said to him, "if you catch one tomorrow, I'll butcher it for you!". The very next day he spots a swordfish, does the drill, and catches a two hundred and seventy five pounder! As it had always been with this man and everyone else, I lived up to my side of the bargain and butchered the fish. Not a lot of fun in the cockpit of a little, old Bert with no washdown hose, but your word is your word and you have to live up to it, no matter what.

The rest of the story had to do with that spreaderbar. It was a first generation Little Meatball SuperBar. If I remember right, that captain and his charters caught a pretty amazing five species of gamefish on them, starting with the swordy, to yellowfin, to yellowtail, to skipjack, to dorado. Man, what a day!

It's kind of a shame that I can't tell stories like that on other forums here because it is deemed by some to dirty up and disorganize them, just because I wrote a book or invented something that was used that day, or on those days and I have the unimitigated audacity to name them and say where they can be found. I truly do believe that some of my fellow fishermen would like to hear them and know what is possible right here along our coast.

Ah, well, I can tell them here, at least. That way at least a few people get to hear and learn about and see some things that will either entertain, educate, or maybe catch them more fish.

Now, I have to stop wasting time here. I have a book to finish that has a lot of really neat stuff in it, including that deep trolling thing (it's a long way from just downriggers) that some of you are asking about.

Now go catch some fish and tell me about 'em, folks!

[DEFIANCE]

knowledge is the key to success...and safety too when it comes to shark fishing! ESPECIALLY SAFETY!"

Fred, no truer words have been spoken. I'd have been happy if you would not have shared damn near ALL of the critical info with the world via a set of books. Hell, I had to learn from the school of hard knocks back in the late 80's. The good news is that half of the folks still don't know what kind of info they were given. This can be proved regularly on "you tube" or even on this website. The only thing more entertaining than watching somebody fight a mako from a dead boat is sitting at the launch ramp at about 3-5pm on a holiday weekend watching people attempting to pull out.

[Fred Archer]

Chris,

Good to see there's someone around who remembers or acknowledges. Thanks! And roger on the ramp thing. It's kind of sad that there are those who have read the books and know the whole tamale that get a kick out of and sometimes really crack up, as I admit that I do, when some take it upon themselves to advise others with half-baked or completely wrong input on this game when there are beginners who have read the books that have it all over them from the knowledge standpoint...just goes to prove that experience isn't necessarily the best teacher. You really wouldn't believe the number of emails that I get that all say the same thing, basically, "Hey, Fred. Did you see what this idiot wrote about shark fishing?!" Oh well, if you've got it, flaunt it, even if it's only ignorance.

You know, there's more to meet the eye with getting this shark thing going. For a while I took a lot of heat from guys who said, "This is a bad thing. Look at all of the sharks that are getting killed now." To which I replied, "The longliners and gillnetters are the ones who will destroy the sharks. If sport fishermen don't learn to care about them, they won't try to stop the commercial guys and the sharks will be gone. I'm trying to make fishermen care about them." A couple of years after that a bunch of new sharkers boarded buses and stormed a DFG meeting on renewing longline permits and they didn't get renewed...like the gillnet initiative, one of the few sportfishing victories out here. So as far as I'm concerned, getting all riled up about sharks and teaching them how to catch them worked.

As far as the kill issue is concerned, I also said at the time, "Fishermen killing good-eating big game fish is part and parcel to a new fishery. It seems that everybody has to bring in some dead fish to prove that they can do it. But as it sinks in what great fish they are, and how vulnerable they are to overfishing, most responsible fishermen turn heavily toward catch and release and that is what happens." And to a great extent, it has.

There are still idiots out there who can come up with fifty different reasons for killing every thresher that they catch, but there's nothing that can be done about morons like that. And then there are the ones who sell their sharks illegally. They are the biggest losers of all and the enemy of all of us. The good side there is I understand (and have reason to know) that the DFG is closing in on some of them as I write this. Mister, those who get caught doing that, including their customers if they are markets or restaurants will deeply regret it...the fines and other punishments are brutal.

Thanks for the heads up, Chris. Sorry that I spilled the beans - not!

[Jason]

I did not know that you started the whole shark fishing deal. In fact up until Ali told me that we should give you a forum to write articles in, I had never heard of Fred Archer or any books. I wish I would have known that 15 years ago when I was searching for a resource other than my father and his friends on what there is to fish for in the ocean other than the regular stuff taken on the 1/2 day 3/4 day boats. I guess I'll have to order all of the books...

PS there is no "fuck with fred" mentality going on with the moderators. They are here to organize and work with you.

[Fred Archer]

Jason,

A class response, especially considering my somewhat overly belligerent attitude of late. That stuff they say about grouchy old men is true!

Please, email me at fredarcher@cox.net. I would be proud to present you with my e-books with my compliments. I do appreciate the job that you and Ali are doing here and I wantyou to have and read my books.

God damn, like a lot of other old farts, I really admire younger fellows with class!! Sadly, they are a rare commodity anymore.

All that I will say about other mods or anyone else is that they better not have hidden agendas behind what they do, here or anywhere else, because push me hard enough, and I'll lay those agendas out for all the world to see and hopefully understand why I get so pissed sometimes.

Now I'm going to shut up so I don't slip away from what I am trying to say here.

Class...oh yeah!

Welcome to The Cave, Jason! (But watch out for the bear!)