what set up should i have ready if I see a ling ?

A harpoon and three barrels!!

If its hard headed I will have one guy slapping the water with a rod while I toss pieces of sardine to it. Then I will toss it a baited hook on 80 pd flurocarbon unless I have fresh large shrimp on board. I have never had a ling refuse a fat shrimp. Fresh dead preferably. If you have no bait I have used maguroni stickbaits while making rapid figure eights with the rod in the water and it pissed the ling off enough to slam the stickbait. Make sure its a stout bait though. Otherwise the hooks may straighten out if it is a large fish and your using lots of pressure.

Keep some pitch chum handy and start throwing little bits out to get em eating then slip one with a hook in it and they are likely to take it. As stated above they have a hard time resisting a big shrimp or crab. I often catch a baitwell full of piggie perch before heading offshore. While doing this I will usually try to catch a 5-7" hardhead also and toss it in the well with the fins already removed for safety. I can guarantee you no ling will pass up a small live hardhead. I have cut many ling open full of hardheads

I've caught a lot of Ling by just dangling a large bucktail jig (2oz - 4 oz) over the side with a big old nasty squid on it. But besides hardheads a live piggy is a good choice too.

i keep a rod setup with a 6" gulp curly tail mullet or grub to throw at them.

never had a ling pass up a catfish

Ring a bell! Ding a ling!

One of the many species I have yet to catch! Good info about the hardheads!

For Ling/Cobia we have always used eels about about a foot long..You see the ling..toss the eel to him on a king rig with little to no weight..The ling have always bee lined straight to the eel and nailed them..or lure magnum rapala's in black or blue back with silver white under body divers will get them to bite...Ling fight hard as hell so have the right casting tackle.

After cleaning a bunch of them I noticed they all had the same thing in their guts. Small crabs about as big around as a half dollar. I bought a pack of gulp crabs for the ones that come around the boat. Fish them weightless on a small circle hook on a spinning rig set up just for this and they will eat it no problem.

great info thanks to all !!!

I was thinking about gaffing one outside my boat about 5 feet long I tried live bait and no luck. Next time I will try the catfish. Good thread I like the crab idea too

I caught one two sundays ago on a whole squid. No weight, just a hook and squid. It was chasing everyones lure but only grabbing the tip of the tails like it was tasteing them. When it grabbed the squid the same way then sucked it all the way down.

This.

DOA Baitbuster they will hit it every time! Caught 4 in one day back to back on a shamino sahara 2500 with 20lb power pro. Good thing they run down... It was only 90' deep and I just had to drag them up.