Trolling with a longline
A longline is typically laid along the sea bed or close to it, left for a few hours, then retrieved.
So why troll with a longline?
A sailboat could lay a longline easily enough, drifting downwind and feeding the line over the stern. But retrieval could be much more difficult, especially if the wind and/or tide has changed. Sailing back to pick up a buoy is a little tricky, especially if there is much of a sea running. Then pulling in the line without a line hauler and without the precise control conferred by an engine seems unfeasible.
So here's my solution:
The weights are my adapted sash window weights shown here. The lines between the floats and the weights are set to a length that allows the longline to be close to the bottom.
I have just fitted a bait well to the cockpit, so live baits can be used, and when the live baits have run out, I'll use Fishtek Jelltex lures. These lures are far softer than normal softbaits, and so have much more action at low speeds. Trolling the line at 2 knots is easily fast enough for Jelltex shads, and curltail worms will jiggle at even slower speeds. Despite their softness, these softbaits also last far longer than other softbaits. (Which is why you don't see them available in shops too often - they last too long, and don't generate enough sales for the shops!).
Trolling a line like this at 1-2 knots should be fast enough to generate the action on the softbaits, and slow enough to keep the longline close to the bottom.
Drag is the enemy to overcome in keeping the longline at the bottom. So braid is used between the floats and the weights to minimise that. Before the line is deployed, the wreck(s) to be targeted are chosen, and the lines to go between the floats and weights are made up to length, using lengths of 50m, 20m, 10m, 5m, 3m, 2m clipped together with snaps.
This method should allow wrecks to be targeted that are in deep water, far offshore, beyond the reach of the day boats - most of the wrecks within 40 miles of the south coast have been fished hard by day boats, and netted too. Wrecks 50-70 miles offshore, south of Land's End are reported to be much more productive.
The line can be kept down long enough to be swept by 2-3 wrecks if necessary.
Retrieval of such a long line from a depth of 100 metres or so, loaded with fish could be quite a task - but here again, the power of the sail can be used. I have various drogues and parachutes aboard. A drogue can be clipped onto the end of the longline an thrown overboard as the boat sails at a couple of knots. The longline is pulled over a 6m scaffold pole mounted on the stern by the drogue through a block forward of the cockpit. As the fish come up, the snoods can be unclipped from the longline and the fish dealt with. Retrieving the drogue involves pulling it backwards through the sea.
I'll take some photographs of this system in operation soon!