FishwithJD

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Bait Drifting Tips for Kings

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First off, let’s get you rigged up. Here’s a good basic rig to use as a foundation:

  1. Tie a snap swivel to the end of your main line.
  2. To the snap, attach either a piece of pencil lead or a Slinky weight
  3. To the other eye of the swivel, run an 18- to 36-inch leader with one or two 1/0-4/0 octopus-style bait hooks. (The roe is fastened to the forward hook via an egg loop snell, which you can learn to tie in a video on this very website).

Most king anglers also like to add a driftbobber – such as a Spin-N-Glo, Cheater or Lil’ Corky – to their line just above the hooks to add buoyancy, action and a splash of color to the bait.
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Chasing Reservoir “Steelhead”

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With general trout season now open it’s time for a little reservoir “steelhead” fishing. Never heard of such a thing? Well, read on…it’s a blast!

My first encounter with a reservoir “steelhead” occurred when I was a kid, fishing a small tributary to a vast impoundment. Walking upstream and flicking a tiny silver spinner into the pools ahead of me as I went, I was felling pretty smug thanks to the three 10- to 12-inch trout that I had stuffed into the zipper pocket of my backpack. As I rounded a bend in the creek, I came to a deep pool just below a 2-foot waterfall. I lobbed a cast to the head of the run, and as soon as my spinner broke through the greasy smooth surface of the pool and began to sink, a great monster of a fish hit it with the fury of a Japanese bullet train. In an instant, the beast rocketed the length of the pool, flashed near the surface, violently shook it’s mighty head and then it was gone…

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Johnson’s Magic Potion

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You’re welcome.??For what, you ask? Well, only for doing the leg work to get you all in on one of the most incredible advancements in fishing I’ve ever seen… way before the rest of angling world finds out, that’s what.
Actually, I just kinda stumbled into this one. Last November, I was in the tiny speck-on-the-map town of Moses Lake, Wash., on a solo fishing/road trip. After two unsuccessful days of trying for big bass and rainbows on nearby Potholes Reservoir, I stopped in at an old, run-down tackle shop/liquor store called Deke’s Bait and Booze.

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The Mardi Gras Peacock and the Big Steelhead

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The guy I had in the right front seat of my driftboat didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that he’d snagged and lost — through a total disregard of the simple instructions I’d given that morning — six of my best steelhead plugs throughout the day. ??It was late in the afternoon as I went to tie on the seventh and, scanning my now much-depleted plug box, I decided I couldn’t take the chance of him losing yet another. Busy yakking with his buddy all day and not noticing his plugs were getting fouled in the rocks, he obviously didn’t care anyway. ??So, I pulled out an expendable lure — one that had been given to me as a sample by the manufacturer. It was a Wiggle Wart, just like the ones the guy had been losing all day, but this one had such a ridiculous paint job I dubbed it the “Mardi-Gras Peacock.”?? The hideous, clown-like plug had a baby-blue back, an orange belly, gold flanks, bright yellow eyes – and for good measure, black and red tiger stripes running down its sides. Maybe a walleye would have low enough self-esteem to eat such a thing, but not a noble steelhead!?? Well, you know what happened next, right?

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Bank Fishing for Salmon With Spinners

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Casting hardware for king salmon is a popular pastime on freshwater streams from California to Alaska to the Great Lakes tributaries. This time around, we’re going to take a quick look at s of the basics of tossing lures like No. 3-5 Mepps and Blue Fox Super Vibrax spinners as well as spoons like Little Cleos, Cohos, Pixees and BC Steels.
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