Trolling for Salmon

Lure selections should be made in conjunction with tackle shops or marinas; they have current knowledge. The following diagrams will be useful for rigging your lures. Please note that the rigging schemes suggested here may require minor modifications in each fishing area.

More salmon are caught on bait in more locations in Oregon than any other lure. Note that ball-bearing swivels are essential to eliminate the line twist that results from the natural action of trolled bait: a spiral of 1 to 6 inches diameter. Most commonly, bait combines with a dodger, a chromed metal strip that sways back and forth. The two most common rigs are:

The second most commonly used lure, the hootchie, resembles a squid. These are sold in three sizes: plankton, squirt and hootchie. The most important point to remember is that leader should be 25- to 40-pound test. All hootchies should be fished with a flasher, a plastic strip that emits a flash of light each time it revolves.

Clean in design, plugs are my lure of choice for trolling. They are simple lures to fish, and hook fish solidly.

Spoons lay claim to being the salmon lure of greatest tradition, the old copper commercial lures having trolled millions of fish from the seas over the decades. Make sure to insert a slight, crooked bend in the tail third of the lure. The asymetry is what kills the fish. Big Moby lures® have been proven to take fish, our guides prefer them, in the Coastal waters.

Hard as it may be to be believed, bucktail flies made out of polar bear hair actually catch more salmon than other flies. Perhaps it is the wavy fur or the fact that the individual hairs are hollow, a feature that provides polar bears fine insulation from northern cold. Too bad the lures cost three times as much as other varieties. Buy them anyway; the objective is catching fish

These rig designs have evolved over the decades and are very specific. You will catch more fish if you observe and dutifully incorporate each and every detail. Having said this, it has to be admitted once again that local variations will outproduce these basics and, therefore, must be included in your own versions of them. The most obvious variant is leader length. Each area - and these can be as close as ten miles from one another - has a specific length for each specific species, and sometimes within the same species. Sometimes, for example, coho runs as little as two weeks apart require different leader lengths!

I have not said anything about specific colors; they are a local consideration. Generally speaking, however, baitheads should be of the glow varieties or the new painted versions that reproduce hootchie colors; hootchies - most lures for that matter - should be ultraviolet as well as glow in the dark; remember to use red spoons in fall, green in winter; generally use white or light first thing in the morning, and then move to darker colors as light comes on the water.