Rivers Sportsman's Club
Chinook King Salmon
The biggest chinook/king salmon are almost always caught mooching. Here a classic Rivers Inlet 60lbs. monster dwarfs a 30lbs. trophy.
Rivers Sportsman's Club
We use three main techniques to catch salmon. They are mooching, top water trolling, and, more recently, deep water trolling with downriggers. For 27 years at the lodge we had almost exclusively fished the top water using 4-6 oz weights with a 6-12 foot leader and a cut plug herring to either mooch or troll until 3 years ago when we introduced the downriggers. Traditionally, mooching has been the most successful way to catch the mighty big chinook/king salmon. Mooching is a type of drift fishing where you stick close to the shore and fish at a shallow depth slowly working the structure of the points, reefs and kelp beds by putting your engine in and out of gear.
The big lazy salmon (up to 80 lbs.) lurk there, resting from the tide and current, waiting for the bait fish to come to them. Mooching is without a doubt the most skilled type of fishing we do and can take many trips to our lodge to "perfect". However, it is well worth the effort to learn the art of mooching as it the technique that consistently produces the biggest trophy salmon.
As with all types of fishing, gear maintenance is crucial. To be successful, you have to be constantly checking your knots for strength, your line for burrs and knicks, and the spin of your herring to make sure that you have just the right roll.
The other main skill is driving the boat so that you can keep in the "zone" right where the deep water meets the shallows, without getting caught on the bottom. Then there is the actual salmon bite which is the most critical part of the mooching technique. With mooching you are moving so slowly that the salmon rarely just takes the bait and runs. Mostly the bite is detected with just the lightest of taps on the rod tip. To the untrained eye, it is hard to differentiate from the normal rod tip movement caused by the wind tide, currents and swell. You can't take your eyes off your rod tip ever. When you see that first tap tap tap on the rod tip you have to immediately spring into action letting out line to create slack so that the fish nibbling at your bait takes it without being spooked. Sometimes, you have to feed out lots and lots of line before the salmon starts to swim away with it in its mouth. When it swims with the bait it either runs towards the boat or way from you. When it runs away the rod tops bends and you simply set the hook. When the fish comes towards you the line goes slack and you have to reel like mad before you get enough tension back on the rod tip to effectively set the hook.
As you can see, mooching is a very "hands on" technique, but for many of our guests who have fished with us for 30 years it is the only way to fish. There is nothing like feeling the weight of a giant salmon at the hook set, then those first few head shakes and then the exhilaration as line screams out and you feel the power of that first run and you yell FISH ON for all to hear!
The other skill is dealing with the boat and gear amidst the chaos of having a big fish screaming out line. Getting the other line in, negotiating through any other boats in the area, following the fish out to open water and then successfully keeping just the right amount of pressure on the line as you fight the fish, sometimes for a couple of hours or more ... oh, and then the netting, another skill set altogether and when most big fish are lost. Did I say 'relaxing'? Definitely, in the most exciting and distracting of ways. As we are a floating lodge we are very close to the fishing grounds. The main mooching spots are only minutes from the lodge at the Wall, Kevin's Corner, the Dome, Dowling & Cranston Points & up the Inlet towards Drainy Narrows.