Rigging plastic worms for steelhead fishing

It’s no secret that steelhead love pink plastic! Here’s a quick and easy way to rig up…

Fall Chum Fishing

Though they/ve long been treated like the red-headed stepchildren of the salmon world, chum salmon are starting to gain a pretty dedicated following these days. When you take a closer look, it’s easy to see why — chums are plentiful and can sometimes top 20 pounds; they bite great and are absolutely tenacious when hooked.

The only real downside to them is they are not as tasty as kings, reds and silvers. But that’s really not a problem — just keep a couple reds for the freezer and then have a ball catching and releasing chums all day long!

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Shallow Water Rockfishing

Rockfishing doesn’t have to be just about the meat. Instead of dragging bloated, bug-eyed bottomfish up from 50 fathoms, try busting out some bass gear and hitting the shallows…it’s a blast!

And it’s not just fun…shallow water rockcoddin’ is also very productive. In fact, some of the best fishing you’ll find these days for lings and assorted other rockfish takes place near the beach, away from where the commercial draggers and big party boats fish.

How Shallow? If you’ve got nice weather (fall’s a great time for it!), you can catch rockfish all the way into 10 feet of water, but I do most of mine in 20 to 60 feet.

As with fishing deep, you want to target structure when working close to shore. Look for rock piles, reefs, pinnacles, the outside edges of kelp lines and rocky ledges. Since you may often be working close to rocks, you’re going to want to pick a day with very little swell and wind. Even when you’re working away from hazards, ground swell days suck because the wave action is much more pronounced in shallow water and the fish have a tendency to hunker down.

A 6 to 7 ½ – foot trigger handle rod with a moderately fast action works well for shallow water rockfishing (think bass rods, here). The stick I most often use is the GLoomis MBR844, which is nice and light but has enough backbone to yank a 20-pound ling out of his house.

In the reel department, pick something that’s got a durable thumb bar (which allows you to quickly play out more line if the water gets deeper), good cranking power and a tough drag. Spool up with braided line in the 20- to 60-pound range and run a 3- to 6-foot section of 15- to 30-pound fluorocarbon or mono between your jig and the braid.

You don’t have to get too technical when it comes to bottomfish lures. I like to run two basic types of jig — rubber swimbaits with 1- to 4-ounce lead heads:

iron like Hopkins, Crippled Herring, Buzz Bombs, Revenge and Bomber Slab spoons (to name a few) also work well in the same size range:

I keep my jigs in the 1- to 4-ounce range because heavier lures simply end up being too much work on light gear. Plus, light lures are easier to impart action into and don’t get snagged as much. A simple rule of thumb is pick a lure that’s just heavy enough to keep down in the strike zone but doesn’t pound the bottom.

To get started with light tackle rockfishing, simply freespool the jig to the bottom, reel up a couple cranks and then use a sharp upstroke of the rod tip to get the lure to hop. The upswing doesn’t need to be super aggressive – a quick 1- to 2-foot snap of the rod is all you need. Next, drop the tip back towards the water so that the lure will fall back to the seabed.

When the lure’s dropping back towards the bottom, it’s important to keep some contact with it. Let it fall as quickly as possible without having slack in the line. Most bites occur as the lure is fluttering back towards earth and you’ll miss a lot of them if you don’t maintain some tension between the jig and the rod tip.

While I’m happy to throw some tasty rockfish in the cooler, I also release a ton of them. Fishing for them with light tackle is so fun and productive that you’ll catch far more fish than you can possibly eat.

Most rockfish hooked in shallow water on light gear can be released without any problems. However, there are times when a fish comes up with pressure damage — a distended belly is the most common sign, though fish from deeper water may also have bulging eyes and part of their stomach coming out of their mouth. The old school way to release these fish was to poke a hole with a needle at an angle behind the pectoral fin to relieve the pressure. That can more harm than good, though, if you don’t know how to properly do it. Luckily, there are easier and safer methods…

For years, we’ve kept a milk crate on board for releasing rockfish. The crate has a 60-foot line tied to it and some lead sinkers to weigh it down. We flip it upside down, put a fish in it and start lowering slowly. The fish will stay in the crate until the pressure has equalized – at that point, it swims off on its own. Usually, about 30 feet is all it takes.

If you search around online, you’ll also find that here are also some products on the market designed for releasing fish from deep water. One that looks interesting and very simple is the one made by Shelton Products.

Spinnerbaits: Great late-summer bass getters!

Looking for a super-effective late season bass bait? Go with good ol’ Mr. Versatile himself: the spinnerbait.

I know, I know…people often think of throwing spinnerbaits early in the season but the truth of the matter is these big flashing hunks of metal and vinyl work great year-round if you know when and where to throw them.

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Side-Drifting for Steelhead

There are few techniques more deadly on steelhead than side-drifting. With summer and fall steelheading cranking up, it’s time to learn how!

Okay, shameless plug time…everything you need to know is in here:

Get your copy @ www.amatobooks.com

The Top 5 Trout Lures you’ve never heard of

So, anybody can go slay a mess o’ trout on a Rooster Tail, Kastmaster, Mepps or Panther Martin. Big deal! But how many of you can say you’ve caught a big brownie on a Bezerker like the one above?

Apparently, there are scads of trout lures out there besides the household names that can catch fish. Here’s my Top 5 list of the best you probably didn’t even know existed…
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Slackwater Trolling for Kings

Just about every river has a slackwater salmon spot. You know what I’m talking about here: one of those spots that’s too slow for back-bouncing, backtrolling, drift fishing or even bobbers. Of course, it always seems that the fish pile up into these zones like crazy, right?

I suppose a guy could catch a few fish tossing spinners or spoons in such a spot, but I prefer to cover more water on the troll. The interesting aspect of slackwater trolling is you aren’t limited to fishing in one direction like you’d be if you were freedrifting or back-bouncing.

Going up and downstream both have their merits and shortcomings, and while every slackwater spot is a little different, I follow a couple basic principles that seem to work in most situations.

Upstream Trolling

Generally speaking, I only troll upstream for fish that are holding. That means I normally find myself doing it in the upper end of a river system, where the fish are parked on a slow flat or in a deep, sluggish pool.

In this situation, I’m looking for the absolute slowest presentation possible and that means trolling upstream against the current with K15 or K16 Kwikfish (use fresh wraps!) is the way to go. Even a pool that’s too slow to backtroll may still have a hint of current — which will force you to fish faster than is desirable if you go downstream. Pulling the plugs in an uphill direction, however, allows you to control the tempo. If you’re flatlining your baits without weight, going against the flow will also enable them to dive deeper.

Ideally, your plug will swim with a molasses-slow fwooomp…fwooomp…fwooomp wobble. You can check your lure’s “pulse” by keeping an eye on the rod tip. Everything’s golden when it takes a good second for your rod tip dip and come back up with each wiggle of the lure.

Most of the time, try to keep your plugs just off the bottom. You’re in the perfect zone when they lightly tap the rocks here and there – just make sure the Kwikies aren’t constantly digging. In slackwater spots, you’ll also often find fish suspended up off the bottom. In those cases, switch over to a lure that doesn’t dive quite as deep – say a T-50 FlatFish – if you’re flatlining. Or, when trolling with weight, simply lighten up on the lead.

Rowing a driftboat gives you the best control of your speed for this technique – plus it’s the stealthiest approach, which can be a big plus in clear water. Electric motors with infinite throttle control are the next best things and kickers are my last choice because they’re too noisy and you can’t troll down slowly enough with them.

Grabs are shockingly violent with this method, and in a lot of cases, you have to react differently than you’re accustomed to. Normally, of course, you’d let the fish eat the plug for a painfully long time. I’ve found, however, that I miss more strikes this way when I wait to set the hook. Strange, but the fish just crush a slow-trolled plug so hard…

When the water has color to it, you can do the upstream troll deal all day long. Unfortunately, you have a more limited window of opportunity if you’re fishing in clear conditions. When that’s the case, be on the water and ready to go at the first tick of legal fishing time – that’s when the fish are least disturbed and at their snappiest. In particularly harsh conditions (clear water & bright sun) like we have here in California’s Central Valley, you may only get a pass or two through the hole before the fish give up on you, so it pays to be the first boat on the water.

Downstream Trolling

While I troll upstream for holding fish, I almost always go the opposite direction when I’m fishing and/or searching for salmon on the move. This technique is particularly effective on the broader, silty-bottom stretches you’ll often find in a river’s lower reaches. In these areas, the fish don’t usually linger for long. They’re already above the salt-to-fresh acclimation zone and well below the spawning areas, so they’re typically blasting through. Not only are the kings in these low down slackwater spots moving quickly, but they’re also fresh from the salt and extremely aggressive biters. For all those reasons, trolling downstream is the best way to get at them.

First off, by going downhill, you can crank up the trolling speed — which allows you to cover the water (and find fish) more quickly. I stick to 1 mph, but some of the guides I know do extremely well by throttling up to 2.3 mph and slightly higher. Since we’re not trying to coax stale upriver fish to bite, going slowly isn’t a priority here.

This technique also works because I’m convinced that kings in these areas are still so dialed into their ocean feeding habits that, when a plug or spinner goes whizzing downstream past them, it triggers the “eat me” response. All the salmon I catch this way turn around and chase the lure down – which doesn’t exactly fit into the “they bite lures because they’re annoying” theory. I’m not so sure that a slow wobble would solicit such an excited response from them. After all, an anchovy or herring is going to run like hell when it sees a king swimming by!

For this method, I primarily pull sardine-wrapped K14 Kwikfish, which have a hyper, scared-to-death baitfish kind of action to them. Offshore, our California kings eat a lot of small anchovies so I like the smaller plugs for that reason as well – it’s sort of a match the hatch type of deal. Spinners also work well when trolling quickly. The idea here is to go fast enough to keep the thing spinning but slow enough that you can read individual pulses of the blade on your rod tip.

There are places I’ve found where trolling spinners or Kwikfish downriver without weight works just fine. However, I mainly stick to running a 3-way swivel off my main line, with a dropper for my sinker off eye number two and the leader coming off the third. There are no hard and fast rules governing the length of your droppers and leaders because it depends on they type of lures you’re running and how much lead you’ve got on. What I can tell you is the lure should be running 1 to 3 feet up off the bottom with minimal contact with the riverbed.

As with trolling upstream, getting your offerings away from the boat is critical in shallow, clear water but not such an issue if you’ve got some depth and/or color to work with. I still prefer trolling with an electric motor, but kickers don’t seem to bother fresh kings down low in a river too much when conditions are decent.

The bite you get when trolling down-current is quite different from the one I described earlier. When a king spins on a dime and chases down your lure, he’ll often pick it up and continue swimming with you for a moment. This is known as a “slack line” bite and the only thing that will key you into what’s happening is the rod tip will straighten up and throbbing (from the lure’s action) will go away. At that point, you’ve got about a nanosecond to set up on him before the big slug spits your hardware. For that reason, it’s a really good idea to hold onto your rod all day – slack line bites are hard to capitalize on when you’ve got your stick in a holder.

The other type of bite you may encounter looks more like a traditional takedown – the rod tip pumps a few times and then the rod doubles over. If you get this kind of strike, let the fish eat the lure until your rod really loads up.

The best bass lure of all time!

Here’s a fun little exercise: Walk into a bar near a bass lake and ask the assembled patrons what the best bass lure of all time is.

You’re sure to get a very spirited debate (you may want to leave if bottles start flying) and about as many answers as you have fishermen. While there are many good bass lures worthy of mention, I think there’s really only one lure that could be considered the all-around best.

It’s the one that, if faced with the decision of only having one lure in your box for the rest of time, you’d pick…the bait that, if you only had one lure in your box and you were starving, you’d use.

I know what my choice would be…
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Plug Color Selection for Salmon

What’s the best plug color for salmon?

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the Kwikfish and Flatfish color choices hanging on the wall at the local tackle mart, but keep in mind that you really only need a few to cover most of the bases.

The longer I guide, the more I find that I try to keep things simplified…a fellow could go crazy worrying about all the details! So, here’s my basic color selection guidelines for fishing for river kings:

Low/Clear Water

Dark/Stained Water

Cloudy Days

All-Around Studs

Trolling for San Francisco Bay Halibut

With no salmon fishing in California this year, a lot of people have been turning to halibut fishing in the inshore areas like San Francisco Bay, Santa Cruz, Bodega and others.

While live bait drifting has always been a popular method for hooking California halibut, trolling is really gaining a good following and its easy to see why: it allows you to cover lots of ground quickly and locate fish…plus, it’s deadly!

Here’s how to do it:
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