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Tubular Tricks
Invention helps maintain bonito baits for trolling
7/1995
by Chris Dummit
The Palm Beach Post
You've got to hand it to fishermen. They know how to make the best of a bad
situation.
Every summer, bonitos swarm like love bugs offshore. Your hard-earned live baits
become their personal cafeteria line.
But if bonitos are bothering your baits, Jim McGrath says just pick them up and
put them on your hooks. Let them know what it feels like to be rushed by an
animal that dwarfs them — like a 300-pound summer blue marlin.
You might say, "OK, but how can I use more than one bonito at a time?"
McGrath has an answer to that.
Livewells are too small and confining for bonito, which swim fast and need lots
of water moving through their gills. So McGrath has manufactured B Tubes.
He hasn't come up with anything new. He's just found a great way to make use of
something old.
Bonito or tuna tubes were popularized 40 years ago by live baiters in Hawaii and
California. They are PVC or plastic cylinders with a cone-shaped fitting at the
bottom and a pump that pushes water up through the tube.
The contraptions were developed after fishermen figured out a few things about
bonito physiology.
"Guys used to flip the bonito upside down. That seems to have a calming effect
on them. Then they'd put a hose in the fish's mouth," said McGrath, who works at
Fisherman's Center in Riviera Beach and sells the tubes out of there and
Brackish Jack's in Stuart. "Then they would run away from where the bait was
because of all the sharks and barracudas. The hose would keep the bait alive for
a short period of time."
It wasn't long before someone decided there must be a way to prolong the fishes'
lives and reduce the shock of being held in the sunlight. They also wanted to
develop a system using one hose for several baits.
With the tubes, bonito are caught and placed inside, head-down. After a
momentary panic, they seem to relax and let the water flow straight into their
mouths. He has heard they can keep bonitos alive for 24 hours, but has
personally kept them in the tubes for four hours.
B Tubes come in two diameters — 6-inch and 8-inch. The 6-inch size can keep
anything from a tiny "bullet" bonito to one of up to 11 pounds. The 8-inch
cylinders can hold fish up to 25 pounds.
You can buy two 6-inch cylinders fastened together or four that are linked. Or
you can customize with one 6-inch tube and one 8-inch tube.
The 6-inch tubes are 23 inches tall, and the 8-inch cylinders measure 27 inches.
McGrath said he started making the tubes after anglers began requesting them. As
a former mate, he had used them and made them before. He said few private
boaters make them once they learn they have to buy PVC pipe in 20-foot pieces to
purchase it economically.
The tubes, which cost $125 to $225 depending on size, come with a drain pipe so
small boaters can pump the excess water overboard. But they do not come with a
pump.
Most anglers are using the wash-down hoses already installed on their boats to
power the tubes. However, if you don't have a washdown system, you can buy a
baitwell pump in the 850 gallons/hour-range and have sufficient power.
The pump pushes salt water in through PVC piping at the bottom of the tube and
up through a funnel wedged at its base. The fish's nose fits into the funnel,
and the water naturally flows through its mouth.
The tube is dark and the fish is encased in water. Even the smallest bonito
acclimate quickly.
With bonito in the tubes, anglers can quickly have enough baits for a good
spread. And if you haven't fished with them, you'll find that bonito are popular
with many game fish.
They are used throughout the summer to tempt the few blue marlin that swim
through the area. And they will tantalize wahoo, too.
"Live bonito are very productive," McGrath said. "You don't get any small
kingfish bites on big bonito."
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