Teaser Distance Calculator

This is something you’ve probably witnessed on undisciplined charter boats. When they makes a hard turn, the teaser tangles with the bait line. When the fish finally shows itself, the leader breaks off and the action end. It’s not bad luck, it’s bad geometry.

A lot of guys think trolling is all about lure selection and speed, but the key to offshore success are knowing where your birds and dredges will sit relative to the wake. Where do you want them to be relative to the pressure wave from your hull? After entering your boat length, target species and desired attachment height, the calculator above do all the math for you. It gives a suggested line payout and transom distance so you don’t have to guess whether your teaser is sitting in the prop wash or clean water.

How to Place Your Bait Correctly

And this makes all the difference because each boat create a different wake pattern. A sleek center console pushes out more shallow, flatter wave than a heavy sportfisher with high bridge reels. If you place a subsurface dredge at the same distance behind both boats, one will run perfectly while the other gets sucked into the turbulence or dive deep. The tool accounts for these hull difference by varying the wake interval according to boat length and type.

Know what goes in and know what comes out. The beauty of this system is understanding both sides: The outputs (what comes out) and the inputs (what you put into it). Choose the behavior of your target species. Billfish like action right behind the boat, typically in the 2nd or 3rd wake slot where the water is stirred up but not messy. Tuna on the other hand likes those far corners so they has room to free-skip without interference from the hull. This is accounted for with the output that shifts the target distance back on bigger pelagics and forward for billfish.

Finally it accounts for the side-pull angle. Many folks overlook the importance of this until their lines foul. Running a teaser straight back require less payout than when it’s running off a corner cleat. The angle puts some horizontal tension on the bait, which makes its head track different.

The wild card in all of this is sea state. Glass calm days allows you to pull teasers farther aft as the wakes stands out and are easily seen. As that chop gets going however, those pressure waves meld into one another. Then you may be pulling a dredge closer toward the transom simply to see it and avoid having it bury itself in swell. That’s where experience overlaps with calculation. There’s no algorithm to tell you what happens to the wake structure when you pick up some bait or how a gust suddenly affect the boat’s trim. The ability to dial-in for bad conditions allows you to narrow your spread and gain control.

The next thing that catches novices is line payout. So they believe if I put out 20′ of line, then it’s going to be 20′ behind the boat. Nope. That’s because when you’re trolling off a bridge or tower reel, that hook up point is forward of the transom and several feet above water. The calculator use basic trigonometry to provide the true horizontal distance from the stern so your teaser drops into the slot where you realy want it. Otherwise you’re dredging three wakes too far back, totally outside the bite window.

Those are just dynamic spread set ups. Once you get on the water you’re going to tinker with the distances by a few tens feet here or there depending off the pressure face that particular day and the response from each head. Some guys likes to run big, broad, aggressive spreads that cover lots of water. Other guys like tight, compact patterns that is very accurate. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, just a matter of conditions and equipment.

Take the opening figures as a guide rather then truth. Deploy your teasers; observe the action; make adjustments till they all track straight ahead. Now you have an opportunity to concentrate on the fish, not wrangling your lines in the process. That’s the difference between an out of control outing vs. You are in the driver’s seat.

Keeping clean water in play and having some idea of where to place your gear is half the battle. The next step is finding it.