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How to Back-Bounce Plugs for King Salmon

July 10, 2016 By JD 8 Comments

back Bouncing Overview(NOTE: This is an excerpt from my eBook Plug Fishing for River Salmon, available on Amazon Kindle)

Back-Bouncing wobbling plugs like Flatfish and Kwikfish is one of the most effective ways to catch king salmon that are holding in deep holes in a river. It takes some time to master this method and it requires focus, practice — and some muscle. Get it dialed in, however, and you will have an extremely important salmon technique at your disposal.

The idea here is to use a lead cannon ball sinker to get your plug down deep. You need enough weight to touch the bottom but not so much that you end up anchored to it. There are a couple variations of this technique that I often employ: Traditional Back-Bouncing and Hovering. Here are the basics of both:

Traditional Back-Bouncing

Once you’re set up on a good hole, orient the boat just like we did while flatlining: Bow pointed upriver when fishing out of a sled and nose down when you’re in a drifter. Start by clicking the reel into freespool and then drop your gear into the drink. You want a rapid (but controlled) sink rate, so lightly thumb the spool on the way down.

Back Bounce 1When the sinker touches down on the bottom, smoothly lift the tip and then gently drop it back down, feeling for the tap of the lead on the rocks. If you don’t feel the sinker hit, let a short blast of line line slip out from under your thumb and then try to find the bottom again. Normally, you’ll have to repeat this process a few times to get enough scope out to feel the bottom on every drop of the tip.

back bounce 2The term “back-bouncing” is a bit misleading. What we’re really trying to do here is slowly “walk” the sinker downriver 6 inches to a foot at a time as the boat slips downstream at about one-half of the river’s speed. The word “boucing” implies herky jerky rod movement but instead you’re looking for a nice, easy pace. Lift, let the current walk the lure back, drop and pause for a second or two. Repeat. Remember, you’re not trying to impart a jigging action to the lure with the lift and drop routine. The objective is to simply keep the lure and lead following the contours of the bottom so you stay “in the zone” and out ahead (downstream) of the boat.

Back Bounce 3Feeling the bottom is one of the trickiest parts to pick up — especially on the initial drop. If, after a few bounces, you have not made contact with the riverbed, simply reel up and start over. When you are first learning, you may not feel the sinker hit bottom and then continue letting line out as you search for it. What’s often going on here is your lead is lying on the bottom and you’ve got an ever-growing bow in your line between the tip and the sinker. As the boat moves through the run, you pass your lead and it usually ends up getting snagged.

Keep an eye on the angle of the line between your rod tip and the water. If it’s straight down or pointed slightly upstream, you are hung up. Reel up fast!

Hovering

Sometimes, salmon will be suspended somewhere up off the bottom and that’s where hovering comes in handy. It’s also quite useful when you have a super snaggy bottom. The basic gist is this: you drop down to the level you want to fish and simply hold the rod steady. For this technique to work, you need to have water deep enough that the boat won’t spook the fish because you will be sitting directly above them.

Fred's Big King

Big Fred Contaoi shows off a monster Chinook that gobbled a plug. Typically, the biggest fish each year are taken on wigglers.

If you can see kings on your depthfinder, drop your rig down to a level that’s a foot or two over their heads. Remember, salmon see things above their position much easier than things below so err on the side of fishing too high rather than too low. If the fish are close to the bottom, let your sinker tap once and then reel up a couple cranks until you feel the plug throbbing. There is less current right near the bottom, so just be sure to come up enough to get the lure working.

Hover Fishing for SalmonSome folks like to sit, as if anchored, right over the fish and wait until one loses its cool and attacks. I prefer a more proactive approach and will let the boat slip ever-so-slowly down through the hole. Periodically check for the bottom and reel up or freespool more line as necessary.

Because you will have the boat “parked” over the fish, hovering is best practiced with oars or an electric motor. Also, be careful not to stomp around in the boat or drop pliers, sinkers, etc on the floor. The less worried the salmon are about you being there, the more likely the are to bite.

Whichever style you try, the same rule applies here when a fish bites: wait, wait, wait and then wait some more before you set that hook!

The Go Big Technique

On some rivers, you’ll encounter a unique situation in which the salmon will be holding in extremely deep, slow pools. In these spots, you’ll often see fish rolling but getting a lure to them can be problematic.

Typically, the water will be entirely too deep for a flat-lined plug — and yet too slow for traditional back-bouncing or hovering. That’s where a modified approach with giant plugs is the ticket. The idea here is to find a plug with enough surface area that it will wobble in slow flows and then match it with the right amount of lead so that it gets down.

It takes a while to find the right combination for a given hole, but this method is deadly when you get it right.

When looking for a slow water plug, you can’t beat Yakima Bait’s jumbo-sized T-55 and T-60 FlatFish. They feature a wider, slower wobble than do Kwikfish (though the K16 has its moments too) and work in awesome in froggy water.

She's huge, but the T60 Flatfish will get pounded -- even by averaged size kings!

She’s huge, but the T60 Flatfish will get pounded — even by averaged size kings!

Depending on the lure, depth and current, you may only need ¾-ounce of lead or less to get down to the fish. The weight of the sinker will take the lure down, and the wide profile of the lure will catch the current and pull your gear downstream.

Drop the plug into the water and let the current slowly pull it back. Lightly apply thumb pressure to the spool as it goes and then stop the lure about every 10 feet. Wait until the tip starts pulsating and then you can start the descent again. It’s a slow process, but stay with it until you get as deep as you want into the hole. Always make sure the lure is working and know that a barely noticeable pumping on the rod tip is okay in this situation. Once everything is working properly, begin to ever-so-slowly slip downstream with the boat. Stealth is key here!

Oddly enough, a lot of the grabs you’ll get fishing this way will be incredibly violent, rip the rod out of your hands type of affairs, so hang on and try not to react until line is ripping off the reel!

Help support this website: When you purchase a product through one of the Amazon links you find on this site, I get a very small commission – there’s no extra cost to you. I only highlight products that I have used and believe in. By using these affiliate links you can help me keep this website up and running. For more info, check out our Affiliate Disclosure page here.

Rods, Reels & Line

As with all plug fishing, back-bounce and hover rods should have enough softness in the upper end to allow the plug to work freely. There also has to be enough “give” there so that a king can chew on your lure with feeling a lot of resistance. And of course, it must have power in the lower 2/3 of its length to handle big fish.

The also need to be capable of lifting heavy sinkers — sometimes up to 12 ounces or more. My two favorites are the Douglas Outdoors LRSC 835M and the higherend DXC 835M. Amazing sticks with a crazy weight to durability ratio!

Shimano CalcuttaThe good ol’ classic Shimano Calcutta is a great back-bouncing/hovering reel. I prefer the 200 size, but you can bump that up to the 400 series if you need the extra muscle and line capacity. For a little less money, you can also go with the standard Abu Garcia 6500 Ambassaduer.

As far as line goes, braided line is the way to go — great strength to diameter ratio, incredibly durable, sensitive and low stretch.  I prefer 30- to 50-pound braid but guides on places like the Kenai River will go up to 80-pound when gorilla-sized salmon are a possibility. There are plenty of good brands out there. P-Pline’s TCB8 has worked well for me.

Plugs

plug eaterI already covered the jumbo plugs I like in those extremely slow, froggy pools but for most situations, I go a bit smaller. A great all-around back-bouncing plug is the silver/chartreuse bill T55 Flatfish, as is the K-16 Kwikfish. 

Rigging Up

The basic back-bounce rig looks like this: You side a quality barrel swivel like a Rosco or SPRO over the end of your mainline and then slide 1 or 2 plastic beads up the line. Tie another barrel swivel to the end of the main line and add a 3- to 5-foot leader (25- to 60-lb. test, depending on the river and size of the fish) to the other eye. At the end of the leader, tie on a duo loc snap with a Palomar Knot.

back-bounce rig
To the other end of the swivel that you initially slid up the mainline, tie a 6- to 24-inch section of 12-pound test and finish it off with another snap. This is the dropper line to which you’ll connect your lead. Go with a shorter dropper in faster/shallower water and a longer one in slower/deeper water. Cannonball-style sinkers work best for this technique and, depending on the water you’re fishing, you may need anything from ½-ounce to 12 ounces.

Learn More

This is just a small sample of what’s inside my eBook, Plug Fishing for River Salmon, available on Amazon Kindle.

Filed Under: Salmon

Sneaky Tricks for Catching more Spring Chinook

February 29, 2016 By JD 4 Comments

One of my many bass lure-caught springers!

One of my many bass lure-caught springers!

Springers: Some days chew like they’ve got a good dose of rabid barracuda in their genes. Other times, they act like they’re trophy brown trout in a spring creek. They’ll drive you nuts…

To consistently get at them, you’ve got to be prepared to bust out some outside-the-box thinking! What follows are some of the tricks I like to keep in my back pocket — to be used when the chips are down and the fish are moody…sort of my “in case of emergency, break glass” techniques.

Bass Gear?

They say that necessity is the mother of invention but dumb luck also has its moments. While fishing for stripers over the past several seasons, I’ve found…quite by accident…that spring-run Chinook (fall fish, too!) have a real taste for bass lures!

Springer on a rip baitMy most consistent accidental producers have been jerk (“rip”) baits — flashing/slashing/rattling minnow imitations. It’s really not that big of a stretch to see why these things work — they have characteristics similar to the plugs like Flatfish and Kwikfish that have been salmon staples for decades.

I’ve also caught spring chinook on swimbaits.  It seems to happen just above tidewater most often, but I have also had them take these things way upriver as well. I guess it’s not that hard to understand why a fish that’s recently removed from the salt would eagerly chase down a 5-inch lure that looks a heck of a lot like a herring or anchovy, but what about one that’s 100 miles inland? Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?

Swimsuit springerThere are plenty of companies making swimbaits these days – I like the 5-inch white or purple/blue flash models from RoboWorm and I’ll run them on ½-ounce jig heads. In deep, slow pools, work them at an easy, methodical pace just off the bottom and don’t give up on the retrieve until your lure is out of the water. I’ve had kings mash these babies right at the boat.

Bass lure springers are by no means an every day occurrence, but the more fish I catch on them, the more confident I get. It’s to the point now that I have them on board at all times and periodically bust them out when all else fails.

Downsize

Everybody from government to corporations seems to be downsizing these days — and so should you. While springers can gulp down a whole herring, a giant Toman spinner or a K16 Kwikfish without any trouble at all, there are times when giving them something a little less “meatier” makes sense.

I typically scale down the size of my offerings on days when the fishing pressure is high and the fish seem to be off the grab. I’ve written in the past about how much I used to love to pull the original STORM Pee Wee Warts for spring Chinook. In case you missed it, I stumbled onto small plugs like the Pee Wee’s and size No. 50 Hot Shots for springers quite by accident years ago while fishing for trout. After getting my trout gear blown up enough times by marauding kings, I started intentionally fishing with little wigglers for salmon and found that they work more often than not.

small plug salmonWith Pee Wee’s long hunted to extinction, I’ve moved onto K11X Kwikfish for my small plugs. You can go down to the K9X without any problem but I like the fact that I can put a mini wrap on the slightly larger No. 11’s.

Of course, pulling small plugs requires that you use lighter rods and thinner-diameter lines. The tiny hooks that you have to use to ensure that the plugs run properly means you’re always flirting with disaster when a monster king comes calling. My take on the whole thing is, however, I’d rather get bit and then worry about how to land a fish than to not get any bites at all…

I’ve also had success on those tough days by scaling down the size of my spinners when chucking hardware from shore. Generally, I’ll toss a size No. 4 spinner for springers under normal conditions and then bump it up to a size 5 if the water’s super cold or off-color. But there are times, too, when dropping down to a size No. 3 is just the ticket. I know, it feels kinda strange tossing what amounts to a trout lure at big Chinook, but on the right day you can go from zero to hero in a few short casts with one of these! Regardless of size, the three best spinner colors I’ve used are: silver blade/fluorescent orange body; silver blade/metallic purple body and gold blade/fluorescent red body.

Tuna Balls

It’s no secret that springers love tuna. Guys have been wrapping their plugs with tuna bellies, dipping their eggs in tuna oil…and now, Pro Cure’s even got tuna egg cure. But not a lot of people use straight tuna for spring kings…but they should. For reasons I don’t fully understand, the use of tuna balls for springers has been popular for eons on the Trinity River in Northern California, but you’ll rarely see them used on any other stream. The bottom line is they work away from the Trinity and will probably catch some fish on your home water too.

Basically, you make them up just as you would spawn sacks. First, buy some oil-pack tuna and put the juice into a small plastic container (with a good sealing-lid). Cut some netting into squares and fill it up with enough tuna meat to make nickel to quarter-sized clusters. Add a Fish Pill or two to the sack for buoyancy and then tie the netting closed with Miracle Thread or Ghost Cocoon. Soak the tuna balls in the tub of oil until you’re ready to fish them.

You can fish tuna balls any way you’d use eggs or sand shrimp – drift gear, under a float, behind a diver or back-bounced. The stuff holds it scent very well and looks good – particularly when you add a bit of yarn to the rig. They’re also cool because you can extend the life of the bait by re-dipping it in the juice. Again, springers can be moody buggers and tuna isn’t the answer every day…but there are times when it is like crack to them as well so be sure to give it a try this season.

Kooky = Fun!

The same moody tendencies that make springers so frustrating at times are also what makes them so interesting to fish for. I really enjoy tossing convention to the wind and trying to come up with something a little different they might like. Some days they do; Some days they don’t…but it’s always fun!

To learn how to anchor fish for springers, click HERE

Filed Under: Salmon, Techniques Tagged With: plugs, spring chinook, springer, swimsuits, tuna balls

How to Catch Salmon on Crowded Days

September 27, 2015 By JD 3 Comments

Unless you are fishing in remote Alaska, the amount of traffic on a Lower 48 river is going to increase dramatically Friday through Sunday.

That intensified fishing pressure will often make the action tougher than it is during the week.

But fishing on weekends is a necessary evil for anybody in the 9-5 crowd as they’re often the only time you can get out. So, rather than getting all worked about the increased angling and boating pressure, guys like me have had to learn to completely change our game plans on the busy days to stay successful. In fact, you can actually use the extra traffic to your advantage!

So, here are some concepts to file away in the back of the ol’ noggin for the next time you find yourself in a crowd out on the creek.

Opposite Spots


When salmon get pounded by boats and gear, they eventually give up their preferred holding water in favor for something a little less hectic.

Pay attention to what’s going on…take note of where the boats are fishing and where they are running. Keep an eye on where guys are casting. Often, you can narrow down where the fish have moved when the bite shuts off by looking for spots that are opposite to these.
That’s the time to seek out and try some of the funky spots that you normally wouldn’t fish.

Of course, you will probably lose some gear in those areas but no guts, no glory!

The Fast & The Furious

Check the fast water at the heads of holes…when they get beaten up, salmon often move out of the meat of a hole and seek refuge in the heavy, choppy stuff.

The Late Show


Weekend anglers are often the most eager of the beavers. Cooped up all week in the office, you can bet they’ll be out early. After playing bumper boats for several hours, many folks will pack it in early if the bite’s off.

If you can swing it, some of the best crowded day fishing occurs in the afternoon and into the evening — simply because the river gets quiet again and the fish come out of hiding.

I have had many, many good days by waiting out the weekend traffic and starting later. Not a bad deal, either…sleep in, have a nice breakfast, miss the traffic jam at the boat ramp and catch some fish too!

Well, that should help you get on your way to doing better the next time you go out on the weekend. Good luck out there!

Filed Under: Salmon, Techniques Tagged With: river, Salmon

Salmon & Steelhead Plugs: Don’t Set That Hook!

December 4, 2014 By JD 1 Comment

A little clip from a recent episode of Scott Leysath’s “The Sporting Chef” TV show…

More Salmon Techniques

Filed Under: Salmon Tagged With: plugs, river fishing, Salmon

How to Cure Roe for Salmon and Steelhead Fishing

October 21, 2014 By JD 14 Comments

how-to-cure-roe
Here’s a fun little exercise in futility: Ask a salmon angler what’s in his favorite cure. First, you’ll get a blank stare, followed by some incoherent mumbling and then a very deliberate attempt to change the subject – it’s almost as if you’re talking to a politician about illegal campaign contributions. Guys get very protective of their cures and it’s usually one of those don’t ask type of deals. It’s a dead end!

Luckily, there are plenty of commercially produced cures on the market that produce excellent baits. Pro Cure, Pro Glow, Shur-Cure and Pautzke’s Fire Cure  are all excellent choices, though my favorite ready-made cure for salmon is Atlas-Mikes Shake & Cure.  You really can’t go wrong with any of those. Each brand has it’s own suggested curing method so all you have to do is follow the directions on the side of the container and you’re in business.

Ultimate Guide to Steelhead Bank Fishing

If you want to really keep it basic,there are some new liquid cures out there that all you have to do is pour some over your bait and… Presto…in several hours, you have cured roe! Read my article on how to do that HERE  If you want to go ahead and try making your own cure, read on…

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: Salmon, Steelhead Tagged With: bait, curing, roe, Salmon, Steelhead

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