Tips on trolling that have paid off
SilverT
2010-04-13 06:07:28
I do not consider myself a chum expert, but at the prompting of Salty, I'll kick this on off with a gift tip my son gave me one day when we were chum fishing. He said that every time he pulled the float bag inside the mainline that he had just cleared, all the chum following the float and having nothing left to bite because the line was full, jumped on to lures on the empty main. That said, we started sucking the opposite main tight to the boat when we pulled either float, so that the chum following the loaded float would jump on both mains. It often made quite a difference, particularly when they weren't in the mood to bite really well and just following the already hooked fish. Thank God for my boys!
kalitan97828
2010-04-14 00:50:03
Thanks for the tip will give it a try. Are you a member of the Chum Trollers Association? We are busy setting up new opportunities and markets. Send me a private email if you want. The CTA has about 42 members and one of the things we accomplished this last winter was the nickle retro....need one say more.
Salty
2010-04-14 02:27:15
Carl,
Silver T has three memberships I believe, Associate, troll, and crewmember.
SilverT
2010-04-14 05:31:03
Thanks, both of you and look for the pm. I am excited about the new markets and look forward to talking with both of you and others.
SilverT
2010-04-17 06:56:32
I mentioned my amusement at the marked lack of response this thread has generated so far to a friend of mine who is on the young side. I am guessing he is in his mid 30's and he commented that he was one of the youngest by quite a stretch at a recent salmon summit.
He remarked that the lack of encouragement and training to newcomers by trollers made it much easier to get a smoking deal on a salmon troller from those retiring from or forced out of the business. He said something like, "After all, when a troller retires, what young person is going to pay top dollar for their beautifully maintained salmon troller with the current apprenticeship program?" I think it is an interesting perspective and I had to chuckle.
Regarding something that paid off, after much thought I found something else we all agreed on. Around Sitka, green and yellow slant spoons paid off for us last year, particularly on buck coho, but they caught a lot of incidental chum and very few pinks. At the beginning of the chum season when we were trolling back toward Sitka we used them to try to determine how many chum were stacked up, without switching out our coho gear. The 16+ pound coho loved them in late august and early September and if I had one spoon to buy, those would be my choice for really big fish. Our thanks to the previous posters who said they were their favorite, as we wouldn't have otherwise tried them.
SilverT
2010-05-15 07:11:45
I mentioned in another thread that I would post some observations on trolling for chum, so here goes...
Line
• snap to flasher - use green chord (way easier on hands and perhaps slows the action down a bit)
• use 100# leaders (broke numerous big chum off with 80# late in season)
• 1 fathom from snap to flasher worked well
• used 2 fathom wire, but often wished I had 1 1/2
• 18” leaders
Flashers
• Blue mylar hotspots worked consistently
• Crush was supposed to work well, as did a few others
Chum Lures
• Dark & light purple Michael Baits, Blued #5 hook
• Trevon’sa twinkle skirts with a Blued #5 hook
Speed
• 0.8-1.5 knots (taking the boat out of gear to get to 0.8 knots sometimes loaded things up)
Miscellaneous
• Chum liked underwater structure - hung around it, hung behind it in current
• Chum went off the bite at tide change
• Chum liked large tide swings
• Chum liked an incoming tide
• Chum bit early
• Chum bit the lures on the inside of a turn
• Chum followed already loaded lines.
Consequently when a main line was cleared and deployed and the float bag brought forward inside the main, the main instantly loaded with fish. We also sucked the main line on the opposite side of the boat in tight to the boat when we pulled a float bag with similar results.
When fishing chum we sped up slightly during the tide change to catch silvers and we caught quite a few this way, particularly on the twinkle skirts.
Wild turns load the lines, but don't do it in a tight drag and don't do it when close to oncoming vessels. Save it for open water.
In a tight drag, don't follow directly behind the highliner in front of you. Don't take the boat out of gear when boats are following close behind.
Fish 30 to 50 fathoms of gear and up to 25+ flashers per line. We weren't fishing deep enough most of the time and it cost us.
Often other boats had 60 fish on board before we had a line wet, however, it was not worth getting out of bed early if the tide change was first thing in the morning. Don't get out of bed late on an early hard tide swing and don't get out of bed early on an early slack tide.
These are 90% of the notes made last year on the way home. Much of this was learned too late to do much good and some of it I was too lazy to incorporate as soon as I should have. Don't spend time looking for Trevon's twinkle skirts on the net (he's my son). The twinkle skirt was a standard twinkle skirt head with highly reflective (must be brighter than average) skirt material tied with white thread and cut down to half or 1/3 length. The idea for them came when an incidentally caught chum puked up a gray baby octopus. They pretty much look just like one if the legs are cut short enough. We tried them the next day and they caught.
Also, keep in mind that these observations and subsequent conclusions are just that and there is better information out there. It's all subject to change, but this should be enough to get started. The handling section on the Chum Trollers Association post is fantastic. If I had it to do over I would have tried very hard to get a highliner to take some time prior to purchasing gear and setting up the boat. That would have made the largest difference in numbers of fish and dollars in the pocket.
Carol W
2010-05-15 14:36:57
I hav e sat on the SSRAA board for 20 plus years and never gone chum trolling however after reading Silver T's post I might have to consider going chum trolling I now have an idea as to how to catch them. I throw down a challenge to the chum trollers and that is if you can catch chums as well as you do we should be able to refine our gear and techniques to catch kings in the terminal areas. The last 2 seasons the net boys are catching more kings out of both Anita and Neets the fish come back we are doing a lousy job of harvesting, and it would seem to me that with all the chum trollers catch we should be able to do the same with Kings.
Salty
2010-05-15 17:16:22
Tom,
Great idea on helping each other catching kings. Here is the problem in a nutshell. The kings do not bite well and as the generations go by we are reducing the biting genes every cycle. It does make a difference over time. SSRAA and the other hatcheries would do well to to use "biting" brood stock.
This theory, which I have been advocating since the 70's is not as crazy as it sounds. Over time we are likely to do the same with the chums.
The previous post on trolling chums was interesting and informative but remember this, every stock of chums is unique in the trolling techniques that work best for that particular stock. Every season is unique in the strategy that works better. Just when you think you have figured something out you will be totally humbled by some young guy who doesn't know much but stumbled onto the solution for that stock that week. Keeping an open mind and adapting to the reality of what is happening this season, this week, this day, this tide, this hour, is essential to successful chum trolling.
The biggest tip in the above post for nearly all situations is to not follow the fleet. Chums get spooked relatively quickly and will stop biting. Too many boats over a school don't just divide the pie into smaller slices, they shrink the pie. Find your own fish!!
On terminal kings. My friend Ralph Guthrie really figured out how to catch Silver Bay hatchery kings. He clued me in and it was absolutely unbelievable how many he could catch day after day in Eastern Channel before the net fishery in Deep Inlet was expanded in June and Cost Recovery launched a more aggressive cost recovey program at Bear Cove. Ralph had days in the 80s while others felt they were really getting them with scores in the 20s.
Similar to what is going on now out at the Edgecumbe line in April with some of the guys. They have figured something out. Basically it is this (which drives many experienced trollers absolutely crazy) our king openings and our line fisheries are a totally different fishing challenge than scratching kings. Arranging our gear to pick up one king at a time or maybe two a line is not the solution in these opening day or line or hatchery bites. (By the way, none of this to come is secret or privileged information. That information which has been shared with me in confidence will remain confidential.)
For hatchery salmon as this applies to both Chinook and chums. I know nothing about hatchery coho harvest. But I did catch 812 coho on one memorable opening in one day and I did not run one spoon that day.
1. Think clatter fishing. Your goal is to get 10-90 salmon on the gear in 2-3 minutes. (I have never heard of a 90 Chinook clatter, but I heard of several 30 Chinook clatters just this spring.)
2. To do this it seems to help to have every piece of gear exactly the same. All spoons of the same flavor or all flashers and terminal lure of exactly the same flavor.
3. Slow the boat down to make this gear and the clatters come on better. The biggest producers at the Winter Line in Sitka Sound were often trolling between 1.5 and 2.0 knots over ground this April.
4. Fish as absolutely deep as you can get away with considering the area and fleet you are fishing in. This brings up a pet peeve of mine. The troll fleet needs to understand that almost everyone now has a unique data base of information they are using to create their own drags. Just because you are dragging 30 fathoms of wire using your data does not mean that the other guy with better data is only dragging 30. He might be dragging 50 and you might be unconsciously pushing him up on that edge or hump as you blithely come along on your back tack.
5. In some cases the damn salmon will not bite if you have the leads too deep. Adjust the depth of your gear from as deep as possible to shallower until you find the optimum depth for getting the clatters.
6. The Japanese have done studies and the Lonnie Haughton research for SSRAA in the terminal area shows that salmon, particularly Chinook and chum, move up and down in the water column daily. They will actually go down and lay on the bottom to the point that thousands of fish can disappear completely from our fish finding technology. Just because the fish aren't biting or showing on our equipment does not mean they are gone.
Enough for now, and I hope this helps some troller catch a few more hatchery kings or chums and avoid someone working the edge with more wire out than you could have imagined. This spring totally humbled me. I did not catch kings at a comparative rate to others nearby whether it was in the fleet or just a couple of us in an area. I do not like being higlined 70-12, 50-11, 44-18, or even 12-0. These are actual comparative scores on the same drag this year. I think there were probably higher scores by some on a few days on the winter line in the midst of 100 boats but I never did put in more than two passes in one day there as it was not the troll experience I am in the fishery for.
I talked on the last day to one of the top winter line producers as we were unloading. He looked like hell. Eyes were bloodshot, he was limping, and he told me it was not worth it. I told him he should be happy, he was one of the guys known to be catching in the mess that is the winter line fishery in Sitka Sound now. He said,
"But at what cost, Eric?"
frozenatsea
2010-05-16 07:50:57
Green and Yellow slant spoons. . . . . . oh, you must mean those new Catchum spoons in size "Z" :D
SilverT
2010-05-16 18:11:14
Frozenatsea,
Nice ribbing. :oops: Well deserved, I might add. You had me grinning all morning. It amazes me how quickly you catch on to our personal naming. I believe they were actually lemon lime manistee's, size 4 with a #6 hooks.
Carol W,
I have a hard enough time catching the biting kings, so I find the challenge highly intimidating. Thanks for the feedback and hope to see you out there.
Salty,
You answered a lot of questions I have had with that last post and showed me a lot I was doing wrong last year. Also, thanks for sharing the scores as it makes for a great read.
SilverT
2010-06-12 01:45:32
Luhr Jensen's old catalog diagram for early chinook was mentioned and I drafted up a rendition their setup. I'll try to draft one for coho later, based on the same catalog.