Carolina Lures Yummee Fly’N Fish
Yummee Fly'n Fish
What’s the favorite snack of most any offshore gamefish? A flying fish, of course. So much so that many anglers on the hunt for tuna, dolphin, and more won’t pull back the sticks and put out the baits until they find plenty of flyers.
Why then do so many anglers troll nothing but rigged ballyhoo and skirted lures which imitate reasonably well the shape of a flying fish but not at all the action of one skipping across the wave tops in panicked flight from the predators below?
That’s what Carolina Lures owner Jim Mckeral wondered, and it’s what led him to create the original Carolina Yummee Fly’N Fish in 1992 and the many variants he now sells.
“For years I watched the tunas running flying fish into the air and destroying them,” he explains. “I knew if we could make a lure that imitated that, we’d have a winner. And we did.”
Yummee Flyers are now available in 4, 7, and 9” versions in a variety of wing configurations, both rigged and unrigged, and have become valued additions to the spreads of most anglers who’ve tried them, especially when fishing for finicky yellowfin and blackfin tuna that are turning down more traditional offerings.
Perhaps the most effective way to fish the Yummee Flyers (particularly for shy tuna) is dangling them from a release clip below a kite at traditional trolling speeds. The kite presentation offers three principal advantages over the usual way of doing things.
First, anglers can make the lure perfectly mimic the action of a live flying fish. By adjusting the amount of line between the reel and release clip, anglers can keep the Yummee Flyer spending as much time in the air as in the water, skipping from wave-top to wave-top, making it indistinguishable from the real thing.
Secondly, the kite can be flown 100 yards or more to the downwind side of the boat, enabling anglers to present a trolled bait to boat-shy fish without running over them.
Finally, suspending the bait from above keeps the entire leader and all terminal tackle out of the water and out of sight, essential for fish like tuna that can be so leader-shy that the only leaders they’ll bite on are too light to land the fish. This allows anglers to use heavier tackle and boat fish more quickly with no reduction in bites.
Yummee Flyers have produced uncountable cow yellowfin tuna for long-range boats on the West Coast, and they’ve become standard-issue among savvy Outer Banks, Florida Keys, and Northeast skippers used to dealing with tuna that have commitment issues.
Yummee Flying Fish can also be trolled in more traditional ways, and several of the models in the line were tailored exactly for that. Multiple hook slots in the lures enable them to be rigged either way, and allow the addition of a stinger-treble hook, the favored rigging method of many Florida Keys and West Coast captains.
The Yummee Flyers are available rigged in a variety of configurations like daisy chains and also as bird teasers in front of other lures. Anglers rigging their own are limited only by their imaginations as to exotic and effective teaser and lure combos.
In addition to Yummee Flyers, Carolina Lures produces a variety of other offshore tackle including Yummee Tunas, skirted lures, deep jigs, lure making supplies, and the Yummee Sand Flea and Fiddler Crab lines for inshore anglers.
Carolina Lures are available at local tackle retailers, and anglers can peruse their entire line and place orders online at www.carolinalures.com.
