Sabiki rod and rig advice

My understanding is that you can't use more than two hooks if you have salmon or rockcod in the boat. Do you cut your rig down to two hooks or stop fishing for bait after catching salmon or rockfish?

You can't deploy your sabiki if you are targeting salmon or rockfish, even if you don't have any aboard.

-Allen

Allen, I'm a little confused. Do you mean once we start fishing for salmon or RF, we cannot go back to jigging for bait even though we haven't caught any of the mentioned species??

Seems troublesome that they could questions you on your fishing motives when using a sabiki with no other fish onboard.  I fully understand once a fish is onboard but before?

How about a sabiki rig intact... all but 2 hooks cut the point off. So, only 2 Viable hooks but all 6-8 there to attract fish?

My understanding is that you can't use more than two hooks if you have salmon or rockcod in the boat. Do you cut your rig down to two hooks or stop fishing for bait after catching salmon or rockfish?

You can't deploy your sabiki if you are targeting salmon or rockfish, even if you don't have any aboard.

-Allen

Allen, I'm a little confused. Do you mean once we start fishing for salmon or RF, we cannot go back to jigging for bait even though we haven't caught any of the mentioned species??

Sorry, I mean you can't use 2 rods, one of which is sabiki, if you are fishing for salmon or rockfish.

-Allen

Ok, that makes sense.

Can't use two at the same time, or one after the other? At the same time for sure you can't.

How about a sabiki rig intact... all but 2 hooks cut the point off. So, only 2 Viable hooks but all 6-8 there to attract fish?

Good idea Ron!

I have two sabiki rods, the 8 foot and 7 foot.  They are heavy and quite frankly are a pain.  Most of the time i end up using an ugly stick.  A tried making one of PVC first but getting the various sizes of hooks to smoothly go into the tube was not easy.

The bait fish go more for the feather on the hook, as stated in another post "no bait needed". My advice to you would be to remove the bottom hook and leave the rest on of the sabiki rig. I do this because when you have 4 mackerel on your rig it flops all over the place. This causes the rig to tangle up on everything. I remove the bottom so I have a larger area to grab on to without getting hooked myself. I will grab the weight then bring it to my reel seat. This makes it so the fish hang straight down and does hang up on everything. It makes it a lot faster and safer removing the bait. Hopefully that made since.

People commonly use sabikis to catch sand dabs too, in which you usually use a larger size hook and pieces of bait.  I like to cut my rigs down to 3-4 hooks to make it easier to handle and usually get two uses out of one sabiki that way.  Sometimes if your having a hard time catching bait with a sabiki I'll add some pro-cure.  Sardines, Macks, Kingfish, and smelt will ruin your larger rigs, and often are found picking off the same bait your trying for.  I end up moving to try and avoid them, but have also found that ripping my line really quickly jerks the hook out sometimes.  For other baits, just grabbing the hook and turning it upside down can free a fish from the hook without hooking yourself.  I try also to let all the hooks get loaded, then try and free them one at a time into my foot well, keeping the others over the side in the water, before putting them in a bucket/tube.  I dont dedicate a rod, instead just use one of my lighter jigging sticks.  I've got a sabiki rod for sale if your interested.

does anyone make their own sabiki (aka damashi) rigs? I prefer to use flouro so I make my own. cheaper too.

Check out fishingtackleoutlet.net.  Sabikis .99.  Look in the .99 section.  Sometimes lots of great deals to be had.

And if u want to avoid tangles, try using heavier weights.  I use 1.5 Pders when Mack or dab fishing.  Helps out a lot.  Just ask alexbulldog about our last trip.  Must have caught over 200 mackerel (crab bait) on sand dab rigs and almost no tangles.  The sand dab rigs I use have 12 hooks.  eBay has em 2x $10.