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Plunking for High-water Steelhead

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When flows are up, you just need to switch tactics and get a little “catfishy” in your approach. Plunking fits that bill nicely and will help you catch fish when the flows are up.

First, a quick look at a simple plunking rig. The idea here is to use enough weight to anchor your gear to the bottom (unlike normal steelhead fishing methods, we don’t want it to drift while plunking) and wait for the fish to come to you.

I’ll always use some sort of big and loud attractor like a Size 2-4 Spin-N-Glo or Flashing & Spinning Cheater. You can go with just this and catch steelies but it never hurts to add a little bonus bait on there — roe, sand shrimp, etc. work well.

High water steelhead will avoid the heavy flows out in the middle of the river and instead travel narrow lanes that are very close to shore.

That’s where you want to cast your rig. It depends on the size of the river, but shorter casts are always better when the water’s up. Sometimes you’ll need to toss 20 feet out and others you’ll only need to make a 5-foot lob.

Plunking is a relaxing, often social affair in which you put your rod in a holder or a forked stick and then plop down on a nice chair and shoot the breeze with your fellow anglers. Or, when it’s wet, you can hang out inside the truck.

Some anglers put a bell on their rod to signal when they get a bite. Speaking of rods, for plunking you’ll need a stouter outfit than you’d normally run for steelhead because you’ll need heavy lead to keep your gear put.

I like a 12-25 lb outfit with 40-pound braid. Spinning or casting is fine…that’s up to personal preference.

Want more info? Check out my huge 300 page eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Steelhead Bank Fishing.

3 Hot Salmon Plug Wraps…that aren’t Sardines!

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There’s no debating that wrapping the belly of a banana-shaped salmon plug (MagLips, FlatFish, KillerFish, Kwikfish, etc) with a fresh sardine fillet will get your more bites than an unwrapped lure. That much we know.

But what if you don’t have any ‘dines handy…are you out of luck?

Not at all! Try these three plug wrap alternatives — you just may find that they even out-fish the old tried and true sardine!

I stared messing with different plug wraps for kings when sardines got scarce in California. One fall, the only baits we could get in the shops were old, yellow and completely freezer burned.

Rather than use garbage sardines, I looked to other “meats” to add to my plugs. Another season, I was in the Alaskan bush and sardines just weren’t easy to come by so I turned to experimenting with other baits. Through these tests, I have found that all is not lost of you can’t find sardines!

Tuna

Salmon love tuna — in fact, lots of guides add tuna oil to their eggs so why not wrap a plug with the stuff?

Well, the bottom line is tuna works at least as well as sardines — and sometimes better. If you can get some fresh tuna bellies from your buddies who chase albacore, you’re golden. The real stuff works great — it’s oily and durable and the fish really chomp it.

In the absence of fresh tuna, simply head to the grocery store and buy oil-packed tuna (not water packed!). Canned tuna has some obvious upsides: it is readily available and easily portable. It works well, too!

At first, you’d think that there’s no way tuna from a can will hold onto the underside of the plug, but it actually wraps pretty well.

I’ll start with several wraps of Miracle Thread around the plug to give the tuna a little something to cling to and then will add a bunch of meat and then wrap it tight. Start with a lot more fish than you think you’ll need as at least a third will crumble off in the wrapping process — then you’ll lose some more when the lure hits the water.

Wrap it tight enough, however, and the tuna will stick nicely to the plug — and it gives off oily scent longer than a sardine fillet would.

Coon Shrimp

“Coonies” have become quite popular in many Northwest fisheries in recent years and I have found that they also make excellent plug wraps.

Put a small one on a 3.5 size MagLip and you have a steelhead slayer — go with a large one on a salmon sized plug and you have a very good sardine replacement. In fact, in some waters shrimp works better because it is something the fish haven’t experienced before.

Coon (coon-stripe) shrimp have a natural “U” shape to them, which makes them perfect for wrapping.

Simply snug the bend where the tail and body meet against the forward side of the plug’s belly hook attachment point and wrap him on there tight. Coon shrimp give off a scent the fish really seem to like and they stay in place.

Cured Eggs

We know that kings are sulfite junkies, they love eggs and are attracted to bright red and pink colors — so why not add eggs to a plug and make the perfect combo meal?

Well, I’m here to tell you the “steak and egg” program works really well. Plus, it’s just too cool to watch the plug wiggle while trailing a white egg “smoke” trail!

Wrapping eggs is similar to tuna in that there is some waste. Be sure you have a good piece of skein attached when you cut a chunk for wrapping. I like rectangular pieces that stretch from the belly hook to about an inch or two from the tail of the lure (depending on plug size).

Again, I like to make some wraps on the plug itself first to give the eggs something to stick to before I get started. Then I’ll vigorously wrap the eggs on tight and then will wrap thread right under the leading and back edges of the cluster as well before finishing off with a few half hitches.

After you get a grab, most of the eggs will likely be gone, but a good base of skein and thread will remain. Use this foundation to wrap your next bait on — it will hold much better than the first one.

It takes a little more time, but you can greatly extend the life of your eggs (and tuna) by making some “bait pouches” out of spawn sack mesh. Simply cut some rectangle shaped sections of mesh, fill them with eggs, tuna or a combination of both and then fold the backside closed (like wrapping a present). Then, apply the pouch to the lure and then wrap it in place just as you would a sardine fillet.

You’ll be surprised how well these sardine alternatives work when you are plug fishing — give them a try this fall and let me know how you do!

Pro Tips: Divers and Bait for Salmon

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The diver & bait rig is kinda like the Tom Brady of the salmon techniques world. Brady’s got it all, right? The good looks, 5 Super Bowl rings, tons of money and a super model wife. Well, the diver setup has its own impressive list of attributes too: It’s deadly on river salmon, easy to learn, a ton of fun — and almost utterly fool-proof. And, as far as I know…there are no deflation scandals associated with it either!

Perhaps my favorite thing about this technique, however, is the fact that it is really easy for inexperienced anglers to master. I can get a boatload of  rookies fishing like pros in a matter of minutes — something I can’t say about other egg fishing methods like back-bouncing. That’s especially important first thing in the morning when we’re most likely to experience the best bite of the day. With diver and bait rigs, I don’t have waste any of that precious “magic time” training guys a hard-to-master skill. Instead, we just put out the bait diver rigs and let everybody get their roe in the water and start fishing immediately.

When properly rigged up, your hooks will always be anywhere from 6 inches to a few feet off the bottom, so snags aren’t a huge problem with divers and bait – another attractive attribute.  I also like the smooth and steady presentation of eggs tracking along behind a diver. Sometimes, I think the bait hops up and down too much when it’s back-bounced, which can turn fish off. Another cool thing about fishing this way is the bite. It’s just so cool to see that first thump on the tip, followed by several good pumps and then a screaming reel. Fish on…yahoo!

Technique

To start you’ll want to position the boat upstream of a good looking salmon run. Next, hit the freespool button on the reel and keep your thumb on the spool. Gently set the rig into the water, bait-first followed by the diver. Allow the line to slip downstream at a controlled rate under tension from your thumb. If the water is off-color and/or shallow, I may only let out 40 feet of line. In deeper spots and clear water, I’ll go as far as 75 feet back (be sure to run all your rigs out the same distance).

You can keep track of the amount of line you have out by using reels outfitted with line counters. Counting “passes” of the level wind device as it goes back and forth across the spool is another way (though some reel don’t have this feature). Or, slide a bobber stop knot up the line at a pre-measured distance (40 feet, for example) and then simply let out line until the knot comes out the tip of the rod.

Next, kick the reel into gear and allow the boat to start slipping downstream at about one half the current’s speed. At that point, the divers should do their job and send your bait to the bottom. The proper backtroll speed is one in which you can cover the run without taking too long — but not so fast that your divers start to float up off the bottom. When everything is down and working, you should see the rods dipping and pulsing as the divers track the contours of the riverbed.

A Brad’s Bait Diver and shrimp is a deadly combo at times.

Keep and eye on where the lines enter the water. If one starts to look like its at a much steeper angle than the others, it is probably hung up. It’s a lot easier to get diver rigs free if you notice before the boat gets downstream of the snag. Also do your best to keep the boat backing down in a straight line. Diver rigs, should they get tangled up, are a real pain to retie (ask me how I know!).

Rod Holders

Putting the rods in the holders is pretty key to turning bites into hookups. We want the fish to eat the bait and turn with it before feeling resistance. The problem with holding the rod in your hand is the decades-old, ingrained fishing instinct that usually kicks in and causes a premature hookset. If you set at the first sign of a bite, you will end up missing 80 to 90 percent of your fish. The rod holder, however, gives you a built-in delayed response time. By the time you get there, the rod should be buried with line burning off the reel. That’s when you know you have him properly hooked!

Now that you have the basic gist of this hot technique, let’s have a look at how to rig up.

Divers

There are two main diver styles that I’ll use with this system. Luhr Jensen’s Jet Divers are my go-to divers when I need to get the baits down deep in heavy current. They are very stable and can get down in a hurry (more on that in a minute). Brad’s Bait Divers, which are essentially hookless plugs, work really well in moderate currents and shallower depths. There are days when the wiggling and dancing of the Brad’s Divers will help draw salmon to your offering when nothing else will and the wider lateral travel also helps increase the bait’s attraction radius. 

Size & Color

Jet Diver (top) &
Brad’s Bait Diver

To pick the right diver, take a look at water depth and speed — and the size of your bait. In shallow rivers that are flowing at a mellow speed, you can get away with smaller ones. However, a massive cluster of eggs will overwhelm a small diver, so you have to factor that in too.

Jet Divers come in size 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50. The number refers to how many feet it will dive — the No. 20 dives to 20 feet, the No. 30 goes to 30 feet and so on. On most Southwest streams I fish, the No. 30 and 40 sizes are perfect but when on big, brawling rivers like the Kenai, the 50-foot models are the only way to go. 

Brad’s Bait Divers come in three sizes Junior, Standard and Magnum. In Alaskan waters, I’ll use the Standards in water that’s 5 to 15 feet deep and the Magnums with large baits and water that’s 9 to 24 feet in depth. 

As far as colors go, I prefer stealth, despite the fact that both companies have some nice pain schemes. My thinking here is: let’s make the bait the focus, not the unarmed diver. So, with Jet Divers I like clear or pink crystal. With the Brad’s I’ll go with clear or black. I just think that the less junk the fish see, the better off you are. I do have friends, however, who swear that they get more bites when using metallic blue or green divers. 

Jet Divers don’t need tuning and generally run great right out of the box. There are a couple things you can do however, to make them even run better. As soon as I get a new one, I’ll flip it belly-up and twist off the plastic tab and crane swivel with a set of needle nose pliers. I always run divers off a dropper, so there’s simply no need for that extra stuff hanging off the bottom.

Since Jet Divers don’t snag all that often, I wear more of them out than I lose. The biggest problem that I encounter is a crack in one of the wings. Unless you’re looking specifically for a crack, you may not notice it – until your driver starts doing corkscrews in the water and tangles up all your other lines. When you find you have a cracked wing, toss the entire unit it in the garbage.

 Occasionally, you’ll also find water seeping into your diver’s body, which is often caused by a hairline crack (from the diver smacking the side of the boat or a fish flopping on it in the net). It’s hard to get the water back out of such a thin fracture, but you can take a tiny drill bit and make a hole towards the back of the diver to drain it. After everything dries out, hit the drill hole with epoxy and cover the crack with Crazy Glue or AquaSeal. 

Brad’s Divers run true as well, but sometimes need a little tuning to get them perfectly dialed in. 

Rigging the Diver

I prefer to run my divers off dropper lines. I’ll make my drop line 12 inches to 3 feet in length, depending on the conditions. As a basic rule of thumb, go with a shorter length in fast water and a longer one when you’re fishing slower, deeper water. 

The next step is to decide how to tie your dropper leader to your main line. You have two choices here: hard-tied or on a slider. 

In most cases, I run my divers on sliders – in other words, I’ll tie the opposite end of my dropper line to a barrel swivel and then run the main line through it. Next, I’ll slide 2 to 4 plastic beads up the mainline and then tie another barrel swivel to the tag end. To the opposite end of that swivel, goes the bait leader. The swivel and beads between the main line and leader keep the diver from sliding down to the bait but it is free to move up the line (towards the rod). 

When a fish grabs your bait, he’ll feel less resistance when the diver’s free-sliding. A sliding rig is also a good thing if you happen to get your diver caught in the net while attempting to scoop the fish. Though your diver’s tangled up in the mesh, the fish can still run without the hooks getting ripped out of its mouth. 

And if you break off on a fish or snag, there’s a chance your diver will float to the surface, where you can recover it – no small victory considering these things aren’t cheap. 

A case can be made for fixed rigs as well, however, especially when you have inexperienced anglers on board. One of the downsides of a diver on a sliding rig occurs when the hooks get snagged. As the boat continues to back downstream, the diver keeps going, working on the bow between the rod tip and the snag. A trained eye can tell something’s amiss, but a rookie may not know anything’s wrong until his line’s upstream of the boat…which is often too late. You can fix this problem by “hard-tying” your mainline, leader and dropper all to a three-way swivel. 

THE BUSINESS END

Okay, now we’re going to take a look at what to put on the business end of your diver and bait rig.

Hooks

Of course when we’re using roe, octopus-style hooks are the standard. On smaller streams, where you are using down-sized clusters, a 1/0 or 2/0 maybe be sufficient. On big rivers where you’re using egg clusters the size of golfballs, 5/0 to 8/0 is the way to go. 

Leader

In dark, glacial water a 3- to 4-foot leader is fine. If you have clear water conditions, it’s a good idea to stretch that length out to 5 or 6 feet. Kings, for the most part, aren’t leader shy so go with heavy mono. I’ll run at least 40-pound test and sometimes 60 or 80 if the fish are really big. 

Bait Flotation

I’ll always start my day off by running some sort of drift bobber with my bait to give it buoyancy and some extra appeal. My all-time favorite bobber to run ahead of eggs on a diver rig is a lemon-lime Spin-N-Glo. Hot pink is my second favorite, followed by metallic silver/red head and metallic silver/green. When the water’s a little off-color or I’m using larger globs of bait, I’ll switch to Spinning & Fishing Cheaters, which I feel float a little better than do Spin-N-Glos. 

Eggs behind a Jet Diver did this king in.

In glacial or dark water, a glow Hootchie between the bait and the spinning device can sometimes be the ticket to getting more hits. This rig also seems to work well on fish that are straight in off the tide. 

When I want a little more subtle presentation I will pin a Fish Pill puffball behind the eggs, just above the bend of the forward hook. The puffballs are cool because they’re soft – a fish can chomp down on one and not even notice that it’s there. 

With Fish Pills, Corkies and Cheaters, I’ll pick a color based on water conditions. When it’s gin-clear, I like to match the bobber to the color of my eggs. If there’s a bit of color in the water, I’ll go with a contrasting color like chartreuse or orange – just to give the fish a little extra something to key in on. 

The size of your BFD (bait flotation device) is determined by the size of your hook and bait. You’ll need a large enough one to lift the roe off the bottom, but not so a big that the bite of your hooks is compromised. The way to test that is slide the BFD through the hook gap. If it can pass between the hook point and the shank, you are good to go.

Occasionally, I’ll encounter a situation in which the fish are extremely finicky and won’t touch a glob of eggs unless it’s completely “naked.” In that case, the baits I’m using are generally very small and will stay off the bottom on their own. When I need a little more lift, however, I’ll use a toothpick to peg 1-3 drably-painted Corkies a few feet up the leader away from the bait. That way, the egg cluster still gets some of the buoyancy from the BFD’s but they’re not going to distract the fish’s attention from the good stuff. 

Tackle

Diver & bait rods need to have good backbone down low and plenty of softness in the upper third of the blank so that a king can yank the tip down and not have the hooks pull out of its mouth. In the length department, 8 to 9 1/2 feet is just right. 

My Favorite is the Douglas LRS C9652M, which is a 9’6” casting rod that is awesome for divers & bait. 

As far as reels go, level winds with smooth, dependable drag systems are the only way to go. As I mentioned earlier, ones equipped with line counter devices are handy. I prefer models that have the freespool release button located on the spool frame (rather than the thumb bar style) such as the Shimano Tekota 300LC. I’ve just had too many clients over the years accidentally hit the thumb bar in the heat of battle when setting the hook…and you can imagine how that turns out! 

The good ol’ classic Abu Garcia Ambassadeur 6500 is also a good choice for a no-frills reel. 

When it comes to line, braid is the way to go. Because of its small diameter, you can get your divers down deeper in a shorter distance — and the lack of stretch gives you solid hook sets. Braid is also very abrasion resistant which is very useful when dealing with big fish in heavy water thats full of logs and rocks. 

I’ve had good success with P-Line’s TCB8 Teflon coated braid in 50- or 65-pound. I like the bright yellow color so I can easily keep track of where all my lines are. 

Offerings

Fresh cured salmon roe is the number one offering to pull behind a diver. Kings seem to really prefer sodium sulfite based cures, particularly when dyed bright red. In smaller rivers, you might use a cluster that’s nickel to quarter sized. On the big fish streams (especially glacial ones), the size of the bait can go from pingpong ball sized up to nearly that of an apple. 

There are also times you can also catch kings on other baits. Tuna balls (oil-packed canned tuna wrapped tight into balls with netting) are effective some days, as are raw prawns and sand shrimp. You can also backtroll lures with the help of divers. Unweighted spinners, plugs and Brad’s Superbaits are all effective. 

When the kings start piling up in your favorite stream this summer, bust out the ol’ MVP of salmon techniques and give it a try!

Light-Tackle Rockfishing: Two Hot New Rigs!

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Here are a couple of cool new techniques that I like to bust out when targeting shallow water rockfish  that really make the fishing fun — and productive.

To be perfectly honest, drop-shotting and butterfly style jigging aren’t exactly new, but they are not widely used in the light tackle bottomfish arena…yet!

Traditional rockfishing — with the baseball-sized leads, thick lines and broomstick rods — could be considered more of a harvesting method than fishing. Effective, yes, and sometimes essential, the heavy tackle route, however, is fairly low on the fun index. You just don’t get much fight out of the fish this way.

But it doesn’t have to be like that! Try these two hot techniques and and you’ll have a blast catching rockfish and lings on light gear!

Drop-Shotting

If drop-shotting sounds familiar, its because it’s a go-to technique for freshwater bass anglers. One thing that makes it great for saltwater fishing is the rig is very streamlined gets down to the bottom quickly. Another benefit is the fact that the sinker, not the hook(s) is the only thing that touches the bottom — so snags are greatly minimized. And because the bait is up above the bottom, the fish have a better shot at seeing it. The action of a drop-shotted bait is also unique and hard to match with any other style.

Basic Rockfish drop-shot rig

The rig looks like this: Start by tying a hook inline on your leader 1 to 4 feet above the end. A simple Palomar Knot is used, but it’s hard to describe on paper, so just Google “How to tie a drop shot rig” and you’ll get a million tutorials. What’s important to remember is that the hook point needs to be facing up when you are finished. The hook you use will be determined by the size and style of your bait but generally they are similar in shape the the octopus hooks used for freshwater salmon fishing with roe.

To the end of the leader, tie a snap — and that’s where the sinker attaches. I like torpedo style sinkers from 1 to 4 ounces in weight for light tackle fishing. The idea here is to use just enough weight to keep your gear straight below the boat. 

Fishing a drop-shot rig is simple. Use your graph to get directly over a school of fish —or a likely looking spot — and drop straight down until the lead hits the bottom. Reel up a few cranks and lightly jig or twitch the rod tip. You don’t need a ton of action here — just enough to get your offering to dance around a bit. Bites generally are fairly subtle — a slight “tick” or bump on the line. Set the hook hard and start reeling immediately to keep the fish from heading back down into the rocks.

Try to keep the boat directly over the spot — it’s much harder to control your rig if the vessel is drifting quickly and you have a lot of line scoped out. 

Baits

As far as offerings go, the sky is the limit. There are tons of really good plastic and natural baits that work well with this method. Six-inch Gitzit Super Tubes are good, as are Berkley Gulp 5″ Jumbo Leeches. Plenty of hootchie squids and grubs work too. Try Kalin’s 6″ Mogambo.

Big white or brown Yamamoto Senkos get bit a lot too.

When big lingcod are on the menu, I love the [easyazon_link identifier=”B007XKL8MO” locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]5-inch Hogy Flounder[/easyazon_link]
and the [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AOJVH6I” locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]Real Fish Sandab[/easyazon_link].

You can also run bait on the drop-shot rig. Salmon belly strips are awesome, along with squid or herring.

Rods/Reels/Line

Rods for drop-shotting should be fast action so you can quickly set the hook on fish that are well below the boat. Some power in the lower end is also essential for keeping big fish out of the rocks. Length can range from 7 to 8.5 feet and is really just a matter of what feels comfortable to you — and the size of the fish you’re chasing. 

Reels need not be fancy but some preferred attributes include a large line capacity, smooth drag and high speed retrieve rate.

The classic Abu Garcia Ambassador 6500 C3 is a reliable and reasonably priced workhorse. A little more expensive is the Shimano Calcutta B, which is about as bulletproof as a reel can be.

When spooling up, braided line in the 30- to 60-pound range is really the only choice for several reasons.  The thin diameter of braid helps lures sink faster while also giving your reel more line capacity. Braid’s lack of stretch means you get more positive hook sets and better action out of your lure. It’s also much more sensitive than mono so you’ll be better able to feel bites or contact with the bottom. For a leader, tie a 6-foot section of 30-pound fluorocarbon or mono to the end of the braid with a Double Albright Knot and you’re in business. 

Butterfly Jigging

Vertical jigging with heavy spoons has long been a favorite way to catch rockfish and lings and the new butterfly method takes it a step further and makes this technique even more effective. 

Shimano Butterfly Jig

The origins of the butterfly jigging method come from Japan, where anglers developed it to target big tuna down as deep as 500 feet. The name comes from the fluttering action of the lure you get when fished properly and, scaled down, it works great in shallow water for Alaska’s denizens as well. 

It’s important to note, however, that there are a few major differences between this and standard jigging. First, jigs designed for the butterfly method have aggressive angles on one side designed to cause the baits to dance and flutter. The hook rigging is also quite different and so is the retrieve method.

When jigging for rockfish and lings, the standard technique has always been to drop the lure to the bottom, reel up a few cranks and then aggressively snap the rod tip up and then let the lure fall again. At the bottom of the drop, the tip is jerked straight up again and the whole process repeats…lift, drop, lift, drop. Most strikes occur as the jig is falling when fishing this way.

The old school jigging style is still plenty effective, but I think the fish sometimes get tired of watching the lure yo-yo in front of their faces. That’s where the butterfly system really shines — it seems to be able to “light up” stale fish that otherwise don’t seem to be in a biting mood. There’s just something about the presentation that turns fish on!

When first starting, it takes a little time to get the rhythm and the proper rod and reel action, but butterfly jigging is pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Begin by dropping your jig to the bottom and then immediately start cranking on the reel. Your rod should always be in the horizontal position and you only need to lift it slightly — the key thing to focus on is the action comes more from the reel than the rod. You’ll be reeling all the time and it’s a very short, compact motion with the rod hand, almost mirroring the circular motion of the reel hand. If you are getting worn out quickly, you are probably working everything too hard. 

Jigs rigged with assist hooks


Unlike traditional jigging, you don’t ever want to allow the head of the jig to drop. Zooming out a bit, picture the lure hitting the bottom and then you start working the rod and reel at the same time. The jig starts rising but also has a side-to-side action to it. You just keep a nice steady rhythm going until you are up out of the strike zone — at which point, simply drop the lure back down to the bottom and start again. Your cadence should be generally on the slow side for rockfish but I like to speed it up now and then too just to mix it up.

Where you stop your lure’s ascent depends on the fishing spot. If there’s a big pinnacle you want to work for lings, fish from the sea floor all the way to the summit. The same holds true for big edges and drop-offs. Many species of rockfish also suspend well off the bottom, so it often pays to work your jig all the way back to the surface. Plus, when you get up off the bottom, you may also get some bonus kings or silvers too!

Jigs

Shimano popularized the term “butterfly jigging” with a [easyazon_link identifier=”B01BKT809C” locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]lineup of spoons[/easyazon_link] of the same name. Their Butterfly and Flat Fall jigs are excellent but there are also many others available on the market today, including the [easyazon_link identifier=”B01NB1UFSN” locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]Spro Abalone Sushi Spoon[/easyazon_link], Williamson’s  [easyazon_link identifier=”B001NXC1K0″ locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]Abyss Speed Jig[/easyazon_link] and the Mango Speed Spoon.

As I mentioned earlier, butterfly style spoons are different from traditional jigs because they are asymmetrical. A “regular” spoon is flat on both sides while the ones used in this technique are flat on one side and sharply angled on the other — and that’s what produces the erratic action. 

You’ll also notice that the hook configuration on butterfly jigs is a dramatic departure from traditional rigging. Rather that having a treble hook on the bottom of the jig, there’s a single hook attached via cord that hangs off a ring at the lure’s head. Called “[easyazon_link identifier=”B019ETCSZ2″ locale=”US” tag=”fiwijd-20″]assist hooks[/easyazon_link],” you can make your own or buy pre-made ones. They look like they shouldn’t work at all but I have found that assist hooks are deadly effective and far out-fish trebles. They also keep the fish from getting deeply hooked in most cases, which makes unhooking and releasing shakers much easier. 

I prefer to rig my lures with just one assist hook — but some folks will run two off the top ring. I have had enough close calls while unhooking fish when one hook was buried and the other was swinging all over the place as the fish was shaking that I’m keeping it to one hook these days. Get one in the hand while the other is still in the fish and you have a situation!

Rods/Reels/Line

There are a few must-have items to make this technique work properly. Starting with the rod, you’ll need a stick that has a reasonably soft tip to allow the lure to work properly. Fish these jigs with a stiff rod and they just don’t swim as effectively . Be sure not to go too parabolic, though, either. A rod with a lot of bend tends to stifle the action.

While I generally prefer casting gear, spinning rods and reels seem to work best for this technique. At least for me, it’s easier to get into the butterfly style rhythm with a coffee grinder outfit.

I like the Douglas Outdoors LRS 785F spin stick paired up with a size 40 Abu Garcia Revo Inshore reel. Again, be sure to use a 4- to 10-foot section of mono or fluorocarbon for leader.

Catch & Release?

There is no denying that rockfish and lingcod are some of the best-tasting critters in the sea and I love to fill a cooler with them any time I can. But I also release a bunch. If you are fishing shallow enough, you can simply toss the fish back and they can make it back down to the bottom. However, when you move out a little deeper — say beyond 30 or 40 feet —  the fish can suffer pressure damage, or barotrauma — 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. 

Rockfish are fun on light gear!

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 there 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 (www.sheltonproducts.com) and is only $6.

Weather

Shallow water rockfish are more affected by rough weather than their deep water cousins. If there’s a big swell, inshore fish tend to hunker down near structure are are less likely to chase lures. That’s why I like to save my shallow water fishing for nice, calm days. Plus, we’ll often get in pretty tight to exposed pinnacles and rocks so it’s just much safer when seas are flat. 

The fishing can also be tough on days when the current is really running. Again, the fish lay pretty low under those conditions to avoid expending too much energy. Plus, it’s hard to keep your gear down below the boat when the water is ripping.