An alternative to expensive green sticks

[Helen L]

I was just looking at some pics from a few years ago and saw something some of you may be interested in. If you're familiar with a green stick, you know you have to be careful fishing them. They are not indestructible by any means. You can't troll too fast or use too heavy of a breakaway line because you can literally pull it apart. If you don't think so, trust me, you can. I've had a Marlin hit and pull the top section out which came crashing down on the deck. Problem was the breakaway mono was too heavy. Anyways, if you don't have $3-$5k to spend on one, you can use an aluminum pole with heavy duty bungies for the jigging action. We call it the "Portuguese Stick" (but not proper English). You can troll it fast or slow, on sloppy days and it works great. The only real fail point on it are the bungies. Just thought I'd throw this out there.

You can see the Portuguese Stick on a friend's old boat. It's on top of the tower. We fished it with a hydraulic bandit reel.

 

[El Mar]

Pretty cool.

I thought about rigging one up on my Parker with an old windsurfer mast that I have but I don't think the height would be enough.

 

[Super Suck]

I put some thought into this a while ago. If you can find a way to secure it, a Pole Vaulting stick. It's far less expensive to the Greenstick just use a smaller bird. They are built from 14-20' long and I have to say be able to support close to 200 lbs of force. I can imagine mounting this to a rigid roof or tower/or alum pole for more height. Somebodies gonna try it!

 

[F/V First Team]

Why not just lash up a length of bamboo? Then you could tout your charter as going "green" and in this case - quite literally

 

[Helen L]

The thing with having an aluminum pole and bungies is that you can troll slow or fast and it actually gives much better dancing. I'll be doing to Portuguese Stick on my tower.

 

[Super Suck]

How many bungees?

 

[Helen L]

depends on the brand and size, but 3 of the heavy duty rubber ones worked for us.

 

[rockfish]

you could call it the portugee lightning stick.

 

[greg]

It might be interesting to put a small sail on the danged thing to keep your bow into the seas when drifting. Kind of like a sea anchor does, but wouldn't screw up your baits.

 

[Helen L]

It might be interesting to put a small sail on the danged thing to keep your bow into the seas when drifting. Kind of like a sea anchor does, but wouldn't screw up your baits.

I like that idea...like an old eastern rig.

We call it the Port. Stick because half the island is of Portuguese ethnicity....kinda like saying Nova Scotia carpenter.

 

[El Mar]

What does the bird look like that you tow?

Got any pics of it?

I need to build one for someone.

 

[Helen L]

bought it from alltackle.

 

[El Mar]

This guy?

How does it run?

 

[Helen L]

ya that one, 44", painted it green and yellow, runs great. We tow 2 pot buoys behind it just in case something snaps we can retrieve it.

 

[Helen L]

Using it on a boat we were running, 58' Dixon. Droppin the hammer 2 years ago with Eyes

We were running a conventional greenstick until the top section broke and came crashing down thanks to a marlin

 

[El Mar]

Cool!!

Is that the big Dixon for sale at Montauk Marine Basin??

 

[Helen L]

Yup. Some guy bought it for his 23 yr old kid and one of the guys from my harbor put his longline permit on it and we fished it out of Menemsha.

You can see the long line reel behind the house on the port side. Just a 20 mile spool

 

[JasonD]

Any photos of "the Port stick"? Have you used it?

 

[Dr Dude]

What happened to the pics....All say Photo Not Found ????

 

[JasonD]

I would love to see this setup