Salmon Fishing: Trolling Tips from the Pros

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Salmon Fishing: Trolling Tips from Pros

by

David Y. Wei and Suzanne L. Clouthier

The tight drag on Suzanne’s Islander MR2 single-action reel had her fishing rod bent double; the taut mainline hummed eerily in a near gale-force wind. Two sharp tugs slammed the rod tip into the water just before the reel’s clicker whined in protest as the handles spun at knuckle-dusting rpms.

Far astern, a huge tyee erupted from the ocean in an explosive shower of spray. Its powerful body whipped sinuously before crashing back into an angry, white-capped comber.

Suzanne’s prize sounded, diving deeply with another long, reel-squealing run. It then held stubbornly, head-down. I asked myself again and again, “Should we have used a stronger leader? What about the knots?”

For Suzanne and me, not hooking anything while on assignment is our greatest nightmare. Fortunately, by getting advice from some of the best saltwater sport fishers in the business, this bad dream has never become a reality. We’ll share with you some of what West Coast “highliners” have taught us about trolling for salmon.

Bait

Gary Elander and Brian Keddle strive for a bullet roll for their small anchovy baits using Rhys Davis Anchovy Special teaser heads. They achieve this attractive action by placing the treble hook slightly above the lateral line (just behind the dorsal fin), and then tensioning the line to give the merest bend in the anchovy.

We also learned some other tricks from Gary and Brian. They use a small, free-trailing #1-size “stinger” (tied about an inch behind their treble hook) that is effective in providing hookups on short-striking fish attacking from the side or rear. They reshape the shanks on their trebles so the points splay outward a bit, to give more hooking “bite.” Adding evaporated milk to the salt brine gives bait an extra-brilliant sheen. Toothpicks used for securing baits to teaser heads will stay completely waterproof — and the excess ends will snap off cleanly — if they are spray-painted; using black paint for this allows the toothpicks to stand out whenever any drop onto a light-coloured deck. These two top guides always have an anchovy or two rigged and ready to go so their baits are back in the water as quickly as possible after any hit.

Mike Hicks, owner of Swiftsure Fishing Lodge in Port Renfrew, likes to get a “hesitation-flip” roll in anchovy, which makes the bait look wounded. He places a smaller-sized #4 or #6 treble into the back of the anchovy, almost directly behind the dorsal fin, then tensions the line to pull the tail up slightly. This wonky variation of the bullet roll should hesitate occasionally, and then quickly snap over.

Tom Davis, owner of Rhys Davis Limited, explained how to get a tighter roll using his large herring teaser heads, “Place your treble hook higher, above the lateral line, behind the dorsal fin. Adjust the tension on the hook line so your bait spins about once a second when matched to the trolling speed of your boat.” Our guide at Kano Inlet, Ed Filipchuk, showed us how he uses Tom’s technique to achieve this desired “snaky” bullet roll (too bad that Suzanne’s 50-pounder there “long released” itself, only inches from Ed’s outstretched net!).

Have you ever found that there was no frozen bait available? Despair not. Tom Davis has worked with Gord McKay, manufacturer of Baitrix imitation herring, herring strip, and anchovy, and shown that these fake baits in his teaser heads roll just as seductively as the real McCoys. We recently had good success with these imitations, fished “head to head” against real bait, at Kyuquot Sound and Ucluelet. We’re convinced that we’ll always have “bait” if we keep a few packages of Baitrix in the tackle box.

Suzanne and I have taken most of our salmon using cut-plug herring. You can troll these baits off downriggers, or use them to motor-mooch with long leaders behind three- to 10-ounce banana or ball sinkers. Guide Dwayne Walsh often rigs his cut-plug herring using only one single 5/0 mooching hook, and finds that this set-up (which produces a slightly “wonky” roll) seems to hook bigger fish. After cutting the head off a herring and cleaning out the innards, angle the point of your hook inside the cavity next to the spine from the “short” side of the cut, then up through the top of the plug so it comes out next to the spine on the “long” side. The hook can simply be left this way, or threaded through the top and then buried in the side; the simple hooking paid off with Suzanne’s biggest tyee.

Flashers

Since Jack Gaunt invented the rotating Hot Spot Flasher, two of the greatest improvements have been the use of three-dimensional holographic tapes, and the addition of ultraviolet (UV) light-enhancing pigments to the plastic. Hot Spot Lures’ sales manager, Malcolm Clay, explains, “UV rays penetrate far deeper into the ocean than other colours of the spectrum. Adding UV enhancers right into the plastic allows the flasher to glow, as they absorb even the weakest UV rays.” Coupled with the brilliant, constantly changing bursts of colour from a holographic “plaid” Mylar blade-tape, these flashers are best used either in the early morning, on heavily overcast days, or at extreme depths for attracting salmon to lures. If we could bring only one flasher, it would be any of the full-sized, UV purple-stripe-over-plaid offerings from Hot Spot, O’Ki Big Shooter, or Gibbs-Delta Highliner.

Early in the season, feeder chinook have an iridescent purple tinge to their scales. Purple- or raspberry-coloured blades with either the “original” Mylar tape, or combined with “glow” tape, are the choices of guides like Dave Korsch. In late spring and early summer, Kyuquot guide Tyson Bancroft likes to use mirror-Mylar on a blue blade. Mature spawners have dark olive-green backs, with a gold tinge to their flanks. Flashers with gold (O’Ki’s Gold “Betsy,” or Hot Spot’s “Gold Fever”) resemble these late-summer arrivals. Of course, Malcolm Clay notes that Gaunt’s first red- or green-bladed flashers, with the original-style Mylar tape, should still be a staple in every tackle box.

Since flashers impart action to lures as well as providing attraction, they are ideal for hoochies. You can determine the amount of action by the leader’s length and stiffness. For sockeye and pink salmon, small hot-pink plankton hoochies are fished on short leaders about 20 inches behind a full-size flasher, so you can usually use a lighter leader of about 20- to 25-pound test. For full-sized octopus or needlefish hoochies, use a stiff 36- to 48-inch leader of at least 40-pound test. So that his flashers can impart a real “snap” to a hoochie, Kyuquot guide Derek Hansen ties his leaders with 50- to 80-pound test. Ucluelet guides Bill Von Brendel and Ken Myers like to use small, high-action Gibbs-Delta Gator, Gibbs-Delta Gypsy, or Luhr-Jensen Coyote spoons; they also favour small baits (like herring strip or anchovy) in teaser heads. Ken and Bill use long leaders, between 60 and 72 inches, to dampen the effects of the flasher on the unique action of their lures.

Deep-lipped trolling lures like Tomic plugs should not be used behind flashers, but can be used with a dummy flasher. Cathy Forbes of Tomic Lures recommends running a dummy flasher about five feet behind a cannonball, then clipping on one of her plugs five feet above, and running it ten feet back.

Dummy flashers will allow you to “play the fish, not the flasher.” Tyson Bancroft attaches a flasher on a mere three- to four-foot leader to his downrigger ball. He then clips an anchovy in a teaser head just five feet above the flasher, and only five or six feet behind the clip. This set-up is very effective for deep “nook-and-cranny” trolling when closely following the shoreline.

Ken Myers, commenting on the effectiveness of flashers, says, “A carrot trolled behind a flasher would probably catch fish.”

Plugs and Spoons

Ucluelet guide Graham Myhre trolls fast. Heavy spoons and seven-inch Tomic plugs hold their action well at higher speeds – after all, commercial trollers, for whom these big lures were made, move along at a much quicker clip than most sporties. There’s a lot of water to cover along our coast, and speed allows top guides to cover more ground.

Without the need for a flasher, run at least 2.5 mph — and then speed up even more if you’re not getting strikes, or if you’re running into dogfish. During a charter with Graham years ago, I had a hefty tyee hit a glass Firefish spoon at an indicated speed of 4.5 mph.

When fishing open water offshore, with lots of room to manoeuvre and fewer boats to watch out for, Graham, Bill Von Brendel, and other guides like to set their big lures at least 75 feet behind their downrigger clips. At those long setbacks, large lures (like seven-inch Tomic plugs) can sweep back and forth in broad swaths across the trolling path, and cover a wide arc of water. Also, running lures far back takes them out of the electrical field generated around a stainless steel downrigger cable, minimizing the need for a field-compensating “black box.”

Tom Moss, inventor of the Tomic plug, advised us how important the knot on the tow bar is in getting the best action out of his plugs. “The knot should be tied as tightly as possible near the curve in the top of the tow bar, so the nose of the plug will “dig” down — allowing its tail to really wiggle — as the line makes about a 90° angle with the plug.” Getting the plug to swim nose-down also makes the plug skitter freely from side to side, and cover more water. Tom likes to use a “Berkley” knot, which wraps the tow bar twice and prevents the knot from slipping out of position when cinched up tight.

While big spoons and plugs bring lots of strikes, maintaining the tension on the main line can be difficult whenever a fish runs towards the boat. We lost many fish when the straight Siwash barbless hook simply fell out with any slack in the line. Our guides’ simple solution? Keep the line tight by leaving the motor in gear, slowing down when the fish is running out line, speeding up when the fish runs towards the boat, and only putting the boat into neutral when the fish is played out.

And most importantly … keep the same rituals. One guide will only set his lures at depths whose numbers end in seven, or a multiple of seven. Another always dips his net in the water upon arriving at his fishing spot. And never bring any bananas on board.