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Underwater Egg Bite Video: Drift Fishing with Eggs

February 27, 2019 By JD 1 Comment

Underwater egg bite vido…how many grabs can you get in one cast?

Filed Under: Underwater Photos/Video Tagged With: drift fishing, Salmon, underwater

Backtrolling for Salmon & Steelhead: How to get more bites to stick!

February 24, 2019 By JD Leave a Comment

You have probably heard that the best way to convert bites to hookups when backtrolling for salmon & steelhead is to leave the rods in the holders, right? But has anyone ever explained why?

Way back in the 1980’s I was just learning to plug fish and had always been told the same thing. But it didn’t make sense!

I figured I’d ignore conventional wisdom and set the hook anytime I got so much as a sniff from a fish. After all, I reasoned, why would a fish hang onto a lure for long once it felt it was hard plastic? It just didn’t make sense!

Well, sure missed a heck of a lot of bites in those days…until I started putting the rods in the holders.

Here’s why:

Take a look at the pix above and think about this: When you are backing plugs down a river, you and your rods are facing downriver while the fish are facing upstream.

When a fish first contacts your plug, he’s typically at the worst possible angle for getting a hook into him. If you were to set the hook when you are facing each other, there’s not a lot of good jaw there to get a point into. Plus, you’re pulling the lure straight away from him — like pulling a spoon out of a baby’s mouth.

When the rod is in the holder, however, you give the fish a chance to chomp down on the plug and then turn downstream with it. As the fish is winking away from you, the hooks have a better chance to bury in the corner of the jaw (where they often stay put).

By the time you get to the rod, the fish has usually hooked itself.

Of course, not all fish bite the same way and this is anything but a fool proof method. But, give it a shot and I’m sure you’ll see that your bites to fish in the net ratios go way up.

By the way, the same principle applies when you are fishing bait behind divers…let em eat it!

Filed Under: Salmon, Steelhead, Techniques Tagged With: back trolling, pulling plugs, pulling plugs for steelhead, Salmon, Steelhead

Red Fish, Blue Fish…what’s up with all the different colors of fish flesh?

October 23, 2018 By JD Leave a Comment

Fish flesh comes in all sorts of interesting colors. Just look at this picture I took after filleting a day’s catch off the Oregon coast.

The crazy blue green of the lingcod…beautiful orange of Chinook salmon and whiteish meat of black rockfish.

Ever wonder what makes a fish’s flesh the color that it is?

Check out this story: FISH MEAT COLORATION

Filed Under: uncategorized Tagged With: lingcod, rockfish, Salmon, tuna

JD’s Top 8 Bizarre Fishing Catches

February 28, 2018 By JD 3 Comments

 

crazy animal skull foundSpend enough time on the water and you’ll see some cool and crazy stuff. The past 20 years of guiding have certainly provided me with an endless supply of interesting things – and some of my favorites are when we catch something totally unexpected.

Take the above skull for example. When we pulled this out of the river (on Halloween Day no less!), we were freaking out. I mean — what in the holy heck could it be? Well, when I flipped it over, I saw “Made in China” written on the underside. Mystery solved!

We sure had some fun showing it to other drift boats as we floated by them. Then, at the end of the day, I chucked it back into the river for somebody else to find!

The mystery of everything is what makes fishing so fun! You never know what you’re going to pull up until it’s above the water. This being said, there’s nothing worse than leaving the house early, on a grey and miserable day to go fishing and end up catching barely anything! This is why it’s so important to keep an eye on the RI Fishing Reports (or wherever you’re located) so you know where to cast your lines and what type of fish you’re likely to catch.

I wish I had photographed all the kooky non-target species my customers have caught over the years but sometimes I’m just too busy running the boat, netting fish and untangling lines to grab a camera. Digging through the archives, however, I found a handful of shots of that are pretty fun. Here are some of my favorites…

Why wives don’t believe that we are actually going fishing

While side-drifting for steelhead one winter’s day on the American River, my client caught a black bra. You can only imagine the lively conversation such a catch started!

Fish Porn

Being an enterprising young fella at the time, I of course snapped the pic and kept it in a safe place — just in case I needed it for blackmail purposes down the road. :)

 

All Mixed Up!

In California’s Central Valley, Chinook salmon and striper runs often overlap. It’s not all that uncommon to catch kings on striper offerings like crankbaits, minnows, jigging spoons…and swimbaits like this one:

Fishing swimbaits for big fish

But oddly enough, it doesn’t happen the other way around quite as often. I typically catch a few stripers on eggs each fall but you’d think they’d be all over a sardine wrapped plug. I mean, what’s not to like? A wobbling plug looks like a fish — and with a wrap — it smells like one too, but I just don’t hook all that many bass that way for some reason…Striped bass eating plugs

 

 

Sucker for a MagLip

Speaking of salmon plugs, I usually catch more suckers in a season on them than stripers. Weird, huh? I’m still not quite sure what suckerfish are thinking when they attack a big wiggling banana.

Yakima Bait MaglipPerhaps it’s the scent of sardine that gets them riled up – or, in this case, maybe it’s just proof positive that everything’s a sucker for a MagLip!

 

 

Pre-Filleted

My buddy Khevin and I were fishing the Trinity River one afternoon off the bank at a popular drift boat take-out spot. He set the hook on a “weird bite” and came up with this unique salmon species: The Pre-Filleted King.

How to fillet a salmon

Foul hooked in the tail, Khevin opted to release the fish despite the fact that it looks like there may have been more meat still on the carcass than the angler who cleaned it went home with!

 

Mystery Meat

Boondoggin’ eggs for kings on the Sacramento River one August, I had two clients simultaneously snag this unidentifiable hunk of meat. Before I cut the line (heck no I didn’t touch it!), we took a close look at the thing trying to figure out what the heck the backstory was on it.Weird things in the water

Clearly the leg bone had been sawed off, which led to a very macabre conversation about folks like Jimmy Hoffa, Freddy and Jason. I’m sure there was perfectly good explanation for why the hideous chunk of flesh was in the river…but we couldn’t think of it.

 

FlatFish Catfish

Well, you’ve got to admire this little guy’s desire! I remember the client asking me why such a small fish would go after a lure that is about its same size. I told him that down there, in the depths, anything you can swallow is one less thing that can gobble you up!

Catfish or FlatfishA better question is what’s a catfish doing going for a FlatFish? Well, cats are much more predatory than a lot of folks give them credit for. Now, I’m not so sure that this little guy was actually going for the plug, however. My guess is that the sardine was what he was after.

Getting Jiggy for Sturgeon

Catching a sturgeon while targeting stripers is not at all newsworthy. On the California Delta, anglers routinely catch both species on baits like sardines, pile worms and shad.

How to fish sturgeonI’ve caught plenty of them on accident while salmon fishing with eggs – and even sardine-wrapped plugs. While spooning for stripers like we were doing on this day, I’ve accidentally foul-hooked a few too. But this little fella is the one and only sturgeon I’ve had on the boat that ate a jigging spoon. I suppose it makes sense because they are known to eat live fish like herring and salmon smolt, but I’d hate to try to make a living catching sturgeon on artificials!

Fishing for sturgeon

Filed Under: Features, Humor Tagged With: catfish, Salmon, striper, weird

Stuffed Salmon with Crabmeat

January 23, 2018 By JD Leave a Comment

Okay here are two great tastes that taste great together! From my buddy Scott Leysath’s TV show The Sporting Chef, here’s another friend, Tiffany Haugen showing you how to make crab stuffed salmon. Yum!

Filed Under: Cooking, Techniques Tagged With: crab, recipe, Salmon, scott leysath

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