Sticking with the Standards

Although constant innovations in tackle and techniques are a hallmark of the sport-fishing industry, angler and boat owner Sandy Smith is old-school in the sense of, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And his results are hard to argue with.

Eight years ago, Smith found himself ready for a new challenge, so he bought a 58-foot custom Carolina boat that he named Zues, after his late Rottweiler. He enjoyed fishing in a couple of the Bahamas Billfish Championship events in 2010, so Smith teamed with Capt. Glenn Cameron and mate Tim Lanahan and won the 2011 championship series. They had two firstplace finishes and two seconds out of five tournaments, and set a series record with 12,000 total points. In 15 days of fishing in the Bahamas, the Zues team released 13 blue marlin, 12 white marlin and 11 sailfish, nearly all of them on 20- and 30-pound outfits.

Now, Smith and mate Christian Springsteen return to the Bahamas for a few months each year with the goal of releasing 100 billfish in a season. Smith, who runs the boat, uses the exact same setup that he learned from Cameron and Lanahan in the BBC: two squid daisy chains, two dredges and two flat lines, with a rod on the bridge. The first year, Smith and Springsteen, who rarely have other people on the boat, caught 87 billfish, mostly blue marlin along with some whites and sails mixed in. They also had a couple of grand slams.

“I became pretty good at billfishing thanks to Glenn and Tim,” Smith says. “I fish exactly the same way we did back then, with the same colors and the same dredges. Red-and-white Hawaiian Eyes in front of the mullets on the left dredge, black-and-purple on the right dredge, and the same green squid chains at the same exact measurements that Tim wrote down for me. We use the same discontinued circle hooks, which I bought a couple thousand of, and we fish naked ballyhoo on TLD 30s. I’ve still got the same rods and reels we used in the BBC.

“I’m going to do it exactly the way it worked back then,” Smith says. “I’m only going to be on this planet for a short amount of time, and the billfish are not going to change that much in my lifetime.” Keep it simple, believe in what works and don’t change a single thing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Steve Waters has written about the outdoors for more than 30 years. He lives in South Florida, where he has fished for everything from sailfish to snakeheads.