I had a lot of requests for the actual skirt numbers from our ahi lure video, so this post gets you that information in one place. These are the combinations we skirt every day at the shop, with the manufacturer codes, plus how I handle flashabou skirts, because those have a rigging catch that can ruin a day of skirting work if you do not know about it.
Every one of these is a three skirt combo unless I say otherwise: an outside skirt, a middle skirt, and an unders skirt. Here are the exact skirts:
| Lure color | Outside | Middle | Unders |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Salmon | Yamashita blue salmon, SM1 D6B | Yamashita plum, K2B*10, or Yamashita black purple, K34 SL6B | Orange yellow white, Yo-Zuri W-4 |
| Purple Malolo (milky color) | Yo-Zuri silver with black dots, S-693 | None, this is a two skirt combo | Yo-Zuri dark purple, YO-64 |
| Ali'i Shrimp (purple pink) | Yamashita U3 | Yamashita ice blue, B10*G12 | Yo-Zuri W-4 |
| Ice Blue | Yamashita ice blue, B10*G12 | Yo-Zuri small flake Mavis pink, SP-12 SF | Yo-Zuri W-4 |
| Black Purple | Yamashita black purple, K34 SL6B | Yo-Zuri small flake Mavis pink, SP-12 SF | Yo-Zuri W-4 |
A few notes on those:
The unders skirt does not have to be that exact W-4. Orange and white, orange yellow white, or orange and pearl all work, and it does not matter if it is Yo-Zuri or Yamashita.
On the purple malolo, both of those skirts can get hard to find, the YO-64 unders in particular. Realistically any dark purple skirt will work there. The B52 skirt works, plum works. There is also a silver with black dots that is a little different from the milky one, and a milky skirt without the black dots. If you cannot find the exact ones, try those instead.
For the ice blue and the black purple, there is a shortcut. The creamsicle skirt, K727 SL2B*PW, has orange, white, and pink in one skirt, which is the same thing the Mavis and the orange white give you in two. So you can pull the middle and unders skirts out and run a two skirt combo with the creamsicle underneath, and get basically the same effect.
If you are having problems with your triple skirt combos tangling after you tie them up, go to the two skirt option. Same if onos keep wrecking your skirts. Two skirts means less material to tangle and less to replace, and with the creamsicle trick above you are not giving up the color effect. If you want the full step by step on tying skirts, that is in our skirted trolling lures guide.
Do not get too caught up on having the exact color or the exact code you see here. Pink is pink, orange is orange, and blue salmon is blue salmon. I really do not think a fish is going to come charging up to your lure and say at the last minute, oh, that is not Mavis, that is bubblegum pink. If you cannot find Mavis, find some other pink and use that. These codes are a baseline so you can put your combos together and know you are on the right track.
Blue salmon is pretty much a staple for most of the guys who target big tunas here in Hawaii, especially on Oahu. Ice blue is the other standard, normally ice blue with some sort of pink, or pink and orange, inside. We do ours with just the Mavis pink inside. If you are a serious trophy fisherman here, those two need to be in your bag.
People tend to run a lot of blues and pinks, so I always tell guys to keep at least one black silver or black purple in the lineup. If the fish are feeding on a darker color that day, you have something to cover your bases. Black purple is a good producer for us, it is the exact color we caught the ahi on in our video with Mark Healey. You can see how these combos look finished on our 9 inch Moke OG Blue Salmon and 9 inch Moke Ice Blue.
Flashabou skirts look awesome and they can work really well, but there is something you have to know before you run them. If you run a double hook in a flashabou skirt, it will turn into a big bird nest, and all that hard work of skirting the lure goes down the tubes. That is why I never used to run them much. As far as I knew you had to run a single hook, and in my eyes it is more of a marlin setup anyway.
There is a way to stiff rig a double hook so the back hook is not wagging its tail and tangling the skirt, but that is a whole process: loop, connect the wire, stiff rig the wire, heat shrink, and tape everything up. Here is the simpler single hook rig I use instead:
Set the hook point right at the edge of the skirts. Because the line saver is pinching the line, the lure turns with the line and the whole rig stays in place.
If you have questions about a combo I did not cover here, leave it in the comments on the videos or email us. Best of luck out there.
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If you are just getting into trolling, the fastest way to start catching fish is to run smaller lures. Here is what I tell less experienced fishermen about lure size, leader, speed, and keeping the spread simple.
The exact lures I ran on our last ahi trips and why each one went out: how I match my line count to my crew, pick colors off the week's reports, and read the teeth marks an ahi leaves on a lure head.
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