Follow Bob Schneider's advice and your big game fishing lures always will be on the right track.

In the big-money world of big game fishing, where billfish are the attraction, few fishermen know more about the sport than Florida lure manufacturer Bob Schneider. While he spends more time ashore these days than he would like, Schneider's presence nevertheless is felt wherever blue-water anglers gather. His lures take more than their share of tournament booty each year and have accounted for numerous billfish records.

That's not surprising, given the engineering genius of the man, coupled with his years of experience in pursuit of marlin and sailfish. In the 40 years since he developed his first glass-head trolling lure, Schneider has made every fishing trip a knowledge-gathering, fact-finding excursion in an effort to learn more about his prey. And, armed with all the scientific knowledge he has obtained through the years, the Lake Park, Fla., lure designer has refined billfishing into an art.

To the uneducated, trolling for billfish seems over simplified, as well as rather hopeless. After all, you simply drag a handful of trolling lures behind the boat, cover as much of the vast ocean surface as you possibly can in a day's time and hope to stumble onto a fish or two. But Schneider, (and the captains with which he has shared his wealth of knowledge), has designed a trolling system with meticulous concern for detail that produces billfish consistently.

The key to Schneider's trolling system is careful positioning and color selection of the lures. "With those two aspects of trolling," Schneider says, "you can not only cover all angles involved in billfishing, but stack the deck in your favor as well." Routinely, Schneider trolls five lures: two from side outriggers, one from a marlin- tower outrigger and two from "flat" lines at the fighting chair. "Positioning of the baits is the most critical part of catching billfish," he explains. "Through years of experience, we have learned to position our lures in locations where the billfish can best see them and from where they are most likely to attack." To develop a plan of attack, Schneider dissects the playing field behind the boat into distinct zones and individual waves. Paying attention to such factors as bow-wave turbulence and propeller wash is crucial to ensuring that an oncoming bill-fish gets a good look at the artificial meal you are offering.

"The average guy never really notices the wave pattern behind the boat, so he really puts himself at a distinct disadvantage," Schneider says.

"You must use the different transom waves behind the boat to position your lures. "The best way to identify a wave is to run your boat on plane and pull the power back slowly. As the boat begins to settle, you'll see a wave roll out from under the transom. That is wave No.1 and about 20 feet behind it, you will see wave No.2. I identify the position of eight waves behind the boat when positioning my lures. Each boat will have a distinctive pattern of waves, but 20 feet is a good estimate of the distance between the peaks of the waves at 8 to 9 knots, which is a good speed for marlin lures."

In positioning his trolling lures, Schneider uses the face of the wave and spreads five baits in the first eight waves. He situates the port-side flat line (from the fighting chair) bait on wave No. 3, the closest lure to the boat. The other flat line (starboard) is placed on the face of wave No.4. The port-side outrigger lure is trolled with wave No. 5, while the opposite outrigger line sits on wave No.6. The shotgun line (from the marlin tower outrigger), the longest line, is positioned along wave No.8.

"To better cover yourself, I've found that you should have both a long and short flat line, as well as a long and short outrigger line," Schneider explains. "That works much better than just running both lines (either the flat line or outrigger line) on the same wave. This is much more productive."

The shotgun line is Schneider's "safety valve" lure, which is fished farthest from the boat. Because it is fished about 160 feet behind the boat, Schneider uses Dacron line instead of monofilament to eliminate the stretch and a smaller lure (which is easier to troll on the surface of the water than a normal-size marlin bait at that distance).

Schneider says the long-range shotgun bait has bailed him out on countless occasions when marlin were reluctant to come closer to the boat and take the other lures. "It is a fact that some boats generate a high-frequency beam pattern that radiates through the water and can be detected by billfish," Schneider says. "This can be caused by several factors such as a squeaky cutlass bearing in the prop shaft or a loose baffle inside the mufflers. "A lot of times, a marlin will approach the boat and maybe even target a bait, but suddenly he feels that high frequency and it deters him from getting closer to the boat. He will then skirt that high-frequency vibration zone and swim behind it and, hopefully, spot the lure on that long shotgun line. I can't tell you how many times that line has bailed me out."

Schneider says there is no way for a boat owner to measure the vibration pattern emitted by his boat, but he should be aware that it can play a role in causing billfish to spook near the transom. And he should look for any trend in which the fish seem to be hitting only the long-line lures. That is a signal to move all the lures farther back from the boat, he says.

Another important factor in Schneider's trolling system is ensuring that the lures can best be seen from considerable distances.

It's for that reason that Schneider avoids the turbulent areas behind the boat where prop wash and white water from the bow wave can often hide a plastic bait. "In every case possible, position your lures in areas we call clean water where there is no white water," Schneider advises. "If you position a lure in the white water near the back of the boat, it's almost impossible for a fish to see it unless he just stumbles onto it. Trolling the lure in clean water is just another little trick that has paid off for years." Color is more important than many blue water trollers believe, Schneider says. "Most fishermen are satisfied to follow the old adage of using brightly colored lures on bright days and dark-colored lures on dark days," he says. "But I don't believe in that." While Schneider manufactures some of the wildest color combinations known to man, he always runs three black lures in his five-bait trolling system. Plain black, "There's a good reason for that," Schneider says. "Eighty-five percent of the time, marlin patrol at depths of 40 to 50 feet for bonito, tuna and other; food. They might get deeper than that, but they will always be looking up toward the surface of the water searching for a meal. "Regardless of the sky conditions - whether it be overcast or a brightly lit sky - marlin are always faced with looking up at a light background. A lot of times it won't be able to see a light-colored lure because it blends into that light background. But a dark lure, especially a black lure, provides a silhouette that fish can see from amazing distances. Generally, black lures will out produce other colors because the fish can see them from farther away.

In addition to matching the coloration of a typical marlin meal, the light-color combinations can easily be seen by a surface-finning billfish against the dark ocean bottom that serves as the background when looking down. Schneider's color choice for his fifth (and final) lure changes hourly. By design. Through the years, Schneider has done considerable research into the color vision of bullish. During that time, he combined his research with studies done by Japanese and Puerto Rican scientists to develop a color chart that indicates what colors can best be detected by billfish in relation to the sun's position. Schneider changes that one particular lure color in accordance with his time- proven formula.

While it requires owning a considerable array of big game trolling baits, it is hard to argue with Schneider's success and that of the captains who use his system. "When I really began to explore color, I was amazed at how consistently the color chart proved scientific basis. The studies show that the sun's ultraviolet light permits certain colors to propagate farther into the water at certain times of the day than other colors, This works."

Since blue marlin are the brutes of the ocean, it would seem unlikely that the magnificent creatures would ever grow spooky as they patrol their domain. But more and more, Schneider says, blue water big game anglers are running into cases where the accumulated noise from boat traffic sends marlin fleeing. "It is understandable if you consider the big tournaments where you have a couple of hundred boats and they've found the marlin working a weedline," Schneider explains. "That boat traffic can really take a toll by mid-afternoon and strikes become scarce. To combat such situations, Schneider trolls one lure well behind the boat shortly after noon. That places the lure in a good position to attract the spooked fish when it returns to the weedline. By that time, the shorter lines will have passed the weed-line, while the extra-long line is just beginning to approach it. Schneider has taken advanced big game fishing to a level that few have reached (or trolled). He makes it easy to understand that with a well-executed game plan and enough attention to detail, successful billfishing doesn't have to remain a mystery.

(Article by Tim Tucker, a free-lance outdoor writer who lives in Palm Beach, Fla.)