T
he 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
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