the red head ones seem to get smashed more often but that may be because more people use them?

You should put down a deep diver 6m+
and have a shallow
the deep has taken the large percentage of hits, personally
But yeh id go with one red head then the pilchard looking one on the left in the middle

up north i found the halcos in gold were good as a shallow diver if they were on top. the best deep diver i ever used was a yo-zuri hydro magnum with green back and gold underneath.

i also changed the hooks to singles. seemed to lose very few once hooked. half of the time i was out with novices and there were slack lines all over the place, but they still mainly kept connected.

brand that works! vary things around a bit

Laser pros are great lures for macks but yeah, variety doesn't hurt. Chrome pink and king brown colours have worked best for me.

Given that on the trawl there is no casing involved I joined my 80lb leader to the main line using a swivel, IMO no need to complicate things with line to line knots. Some may call me crazy but have not been running any wire, maybe I'm just lucky but am yet to loose a fish.

Yesterday we found the macks in 20m, not far behind the reef, the weed was frustrating but there's no point trawling where there's no weed if there's no fish. Look for bait schools on the sounder and trawl around them once you find them.

Yesterday was the first time I ran a teaser, did this based on advice from the guy at my LFS, his exact words were you're flogging a dead horse if you don't run one! I guess there's no way of telling if it made all the difference but we did get two macks even tho sounder suggested they were hanging deep. Myself I'm a convert.

Good luck!

i don't think its crazy not using wire.

in the other mac post with pics of the busted lure , you can clearly see they hit the tail of the lure like tailor.

 theory is if your running wire , you have a swivel dancing around in front of the lure , giving the fish something else to aim at.

The purple chrome lure top left works well in Kalbarri, the red heads seem to catch the tuna.

Cheers

 there where over 10 mackies caught this morning off mindarie is going nuts at the moment  GET OUT THERE!

drove past the ramp, must have been over 30 boats out

Just came back from the marina were two boats came in both with macs ,so guess whos fishing tonight.

So i'm interested to hear who uses wire and who doesnt and the reasons for it, Ill be doing a bit of trolling for macks later in the year so im not sure which way to go at the moment. Heard pro's and cons for both.

 always use a mono [60lb]. As said earlier in post, extra swivels create "air bubbles" eluding the fish to strike at the source as well as a lure. Check the lures that have been hit by palagic fish... 99% will have teeth marks at the tail/mid body. The reason for this, is, the palagic fish will swoop on the prey and "tail" it. If other bait is around, they will continue thru the school doing the same thing. This leaves the "bait" unable to swim away, the attackers will then come back and clean up the motionless left=overs. If you loose lures from bite offs above the lure.. there is something attracting the fish above the lure.... swivels, crimps etc etc. Have had good successs with the "bleeding mullet and redhead". A note in changing hooks on lures, try to match the same weight of what you remove. The lures are designed to work the depths stated and the swimming action with the hook weights supplied. I swap trebles for 2 back to back 4/0 mustards. Better hook up rate from my experince.

Makes sense to me, looking like mono may be the way to go.

I have been running 80lb wire, attached to my normal 80lb mono leader. I have only caught one so my sample size is pretty small.

 i agree with bourbon mono for me to havent lost a lure yet to a mack in the metro !

no experience metro, but lost heaps of macks / lures when i had no wire up north. if going for macks i always used it.

whilst trolling for other species (ie trout) i didn't use wire, but i've accidentally hooked and lost a few mackies, as well as catching some - probably about 50-50.

My first mackie absolutely mangled my wire leader, so without that I wouldnt have landed it. Though, a lot of other ones have been just on the trebles (though, often the top or both). Also, recently had one snip off my lure by hitting the swivel. Keep in mind this was a swivel the size of a grain of rice (you cant get much smaller than what i used, it was smaller than the mono knot :p) and 38lb single strand wire. TBH though, I think it hit the top of the wire rather than the swivel though. I dont think its necessarily from the bubble trail as that only applies if your lure is at the surface. A diving lure with a short leader will have the swivel underwater the whole time, and the bubbles only last a few seconds. They dont re-appear unless the lure breaks the surface, or you go so fast you cavitate (and you aint going to be going that at under 12kn). It can still be a tiny little shiny (or black) thing for them to attack. Sometimes they just like small things.

For wire: I use single strand and pretty thin. If in the metro area where they arent swarming, mono will increase your chances at a mack, so loosing a few lures might be worth it to catch that one mack thats a little shy. If up north and they're thick, use wire as theres going to be another mack that wont mind the wire, you may just have to wait a few more minutes (not a few more trips). If theres lots of fish and they're easy to catch, its not worth risking loosing gear, but if they're thin, its better to loose one or two lures for a better chance of sucess.

Had a red letter day metro about 3 or 4 weeks back behind G.I.

Picked up 5 and lost 4, mostly due to hooks pulling and one to a poor gaff shot (my bad). Only kept the two.

We used single strand 86lb wire onto 15kg mono and a teaser.

Never lost any to bust offs or bite thru's. If swivels put you off you could always tie the mainline direct to the wire anyway, and I was led to believe black swivels severely restrict bite off's at the swivel.

That said, have used 80lb flouro trace spinning up north for macks without any bite offs as well.

Couldn't tell you whats best but I do prefer the back up wire gives you when trolling personally, each to their own tho.

 Might have to try using fluro next time manna hey? Didn't think it be that much of a problem, but i guess they don't like the wire. 

From all reports mate we were in too shallow last time, seem to have moved out deeper now.

Water was a fair bit warmer when I got into them so close in.

I'd definately be up for a bit of experimenting though, you can run the mono....!  ;)