Whether you’re targeting North East tuna and stripers, Virginia Beach cobia, or South Florida king mackerel, groupers and wahoo, you can troll them up from deep offshore haunts with an X-Rap Magnum 30.
“That bait is good in a lot of different ranges and destinations,” says George Poveromo, host of George Poveromo’s World of Saltwater Fishing on NBC Sports Outdoors. “It has a lot of appeal to a broad range of pelagic fish that are not up on the surface feeding.”
Off the coast of New England, X-Rap Mag 30’s are “incredible” for trolling up big striped bass, Poveromo says. Off of Virginia Beach, troll them for schooling bluefin and yellowfin tunas “once you get further up the canyons off of those areas there” and for cobia when “they’re down in deep shipping channels.” In Florida – particularly south Florida – X-Rap Mag 30’s are excellent trolling lures for king mackerel, groupers and wahoo, he says.
You can troll X-Rap Mag 30’s up to 13 knots for big gamefish worldwide. They feature a textured translucent plastic body, an internal scale pattern, internal holographic foil and 3D holographic eyes. A massive lip helps them dive deep unassisted, with nothing to hinder action.
“That large lip takes them down to within the portion of the water column where fish are holding deep and not really wanting to come up,” Poveromo explains. “They’ll stay down like that sometimes – whether it’s because bait is holding deep, or because the surface water temperature is not quite comfortable enough for them to come up.”
X-Rap Mag 30’s can be trolled as deep as 30 feet. Hand-tuned and tank tested, they run perfectly right out of the box.
“They’re so well fine-tuned that once that lip takes the lure down into the strike zone, it’s got that perfect wobbling side-to-side action that really drives the fish mad,” Poveromo says. “When it wobbles side-to-side like that, the fish pick up the vibration with their lateral lines. So not only do you have a lure that’s really fine tuned and looking really realistic swimming through those depths, but you’ve got these vibrations coming off of it. So it’s a vibration thing that pulls them in and also a visual thing when they see it.”
Trolling X-Rap Mag 30’s requires a “pretty stout rod,” Poveromo advises, “because they dig deep.” To get them into that deep strike zone quickly, he pulls them on 65-pound braid. “It helps cut through the water better than the mono and helps that plug get down to where it needs to be a lot sooner,” he says.
If you’re targeting fish without teeth, Poveromo says, tip your braid with 50- to 60-pound fluorocarbon leader. For toothy fish like wahoo or king mackerel, forgo the fluoro in favor of a two-foot section of single-strand wire in the 60- to 80-pound-test class.
X-Rap Mag 30’s are 6 ¼ inches long. They come armed with two rugged VMC® 4X Perma Steel® Hooks, which are impervious to straightening under the duress of heavy tackle. They come in 20 color patterns: Blue Sardine, Bonito, Bunker, Dorado, Firetiger, Hot Head, Purple Mackerel, Red Head, Silver, Silver Blue Mackerel, Silver Fluorescent Chartreuse, Spotted Minnow, Yellowfin Tuna, Hot Pink UV, Lime Light UV, Red Head UV, Sailfish UV and Wahoo UV. The italicized patterns are new this year.
While Poveromo prefers natural-looking color patterns to match the hatch, friends fishing at the same time off the same boat often hook up just as well with “drastically wild colors,” he says.