The biggest chinook/king salmon are almost always caught mooching.

Pictured above you see a classic Rivers Inlet 60lbs. monster which dwarfs a 30lbs. trophy.

At the Rivers Sportsman's Club, we use three main techniques to catch salmon. They are mooching, top water trolling, and, more recently, deep water trolling with downriggers. For 27 years at the lodge we had almost exclusively fished the top water using 4-6 oz weights with a 6-12 foot leader and a cut plug herring to either mooch or troll until 3 years ago when we introduced the downriggers.

Traditionally, mooching has been the most successful way to catch the mighty big chinook/king salmon. Mooching is a type of drift fishing where you stick close to the shore and fish at a shallow depth slowly working the structure of the points, reefs and kelp beds by putting your engine in and out of gear.

The big lazy salmon (up to 80 lbs.) lurk there, resting from the tide and current, waiting for the bait fish to come to them. Mooching is without a doubt the most skilled type of fishing we do and can take many trips to our lodge to "perfect". However, it is well worth the effort to learn the art of mooching as it the technique that consistently produces the biggest trophy salmon.

As with all types of fishing, gear maintenance is crucial. To be successful, you have to be constantly checking your knots for strength, your line for burrs and knicks, and the spin of your herring to make sure that you have just the right roll.

The other main skill is driving the boat so that you can keep in the "zone" right where the deep water meets the shallows, without getting caught on the bottom. Then there is the actual salmon bite which is the most critical part of the mooching technique. With mooching you are moving so slowly that the salmon rarely just takes the bait and runs. Mostly the bite is detected with just the lightest of taps on the rod tip. To the untrained eye, it is hard to differentiate from the normal rod tip movement caused by the wind tide, currents and swell. You can't take your eyes off your rod tip ever. When you see that first tap tap tap on the rod tip you have to immediately spring into action letting out line to create slack so that the fish nibbling at your bait takes it without being spooked. Sometimes, you have to feed out lots and lots of line before the salmon starts to swim away with it in its mouth. When it swims with the bait it either runs towards the boat or way from you. When it runs away the rod tops bends and you simply set the hook. When the fish comes towards you the line goes slack and you have to reel like mad before you get enough tension back on the rod tip to effectively set the hook.

As you can see, mooching is a very "hands on" technique, but for many of our guests who have fished with us for 30 years it is the only way to fish. There is nothing like feeling the weight of a giant salmon at the hook set, then those first few head shakes and then the exhilaration as line screams out and you feel the power of that first run and you yell FISH ON for all to hear!

The other skill is dealing with the boat and gear amidst the chaos of having a big fish screaming out line. Getting the other line in, negotiating through any other boats in the area, following the fish out to open water and then successfully keeping just the right amount of pressure on the line as you fight the fish, sometimes for a couple of hours or more ... oh, and then the netting, another skill set altogether and when most big fish are lost. Did I say 'relaxing'? Definitely, in the most exciting and distracting of ways. As we are a floating lodge we are very close to the fishing grounds. The main mooching spots are only minutes from the lodge at the Wall, Kevin's Corner, the Dome, Dowling & Cranston Points & up the Inlet towards Drainy Narrows.

Salmon Fishing Techniques - Trolling

The first utilizes the same set-up we use for mooching, you just simply go faster. Instead of constantly putting the engine in and out of gear like in mooching, you keep the engine in gear the entire time. As a result, the cut-plug herring rolls more vigorously and at a more shallow depth. Despite how far down you put your line, the light weight, increased speed and line drag keep you in the first 10 feet of water. This is the preferred way to catch the coho/silvers, which tend to be attracted to a more vigorous herring and are typically right on the surface and further offshore. There is nothing like watching your rod tip bury and hearing the line peel out of your reel as an acrobatic coho screams along the surface of the water, jumps in the air and dances on its tail. Pound for pound the northern coho salmon are amongst the hardest fighting salt water game fish in the world and this is without a doubt the most exciting way to catch them.

Light tackle surface fishing at its finest. We often spot the offshore school of coho by looking for birds that are feeding on the bait fish on the surface. Another tried and proven method for finding the school of coho is to look for the "tide line". A tide line is where you can visibly see a line on the surface of the water indicating the point where two masses of water that are moving against each other as a result of the tide change meet. The bait fish that the salmon feed on often "hold" on the edge of the tide line. These tides lines are easiest to spot when they are full of floating pieces of sea grass, kelp and wood debris.

Photo #1: We train you at our daily seminars in all methods of fishing. Here guide Pete is demonstrating the downrigger operation, crucial to your success.

Salmon Fishing Techniques - Downriggers

The second method we use for trolling is with downriggers. This is a relatively new culture for us at the Sportsman's Club that we started 3 seasons ago. Without a doubt it is the most successful addition we have made to our fishing gear ever.

The downriggers are a spool of wire line mounted to the railing of the boat weighted with a 10 lbs. cannonball. You then strip out about 20 feet of line from your reel and attach your weightless line to the downrigger wire with a short line and a quick release clip that pinches the fishing line. When you lower the cannonball, the fishing line then descends with it until you stop at the desired depth, typically between 80-100 ft. The most skilled part of downrigger use is getting the cannonball over the side of the boat and your gear descended to depth with the fishing line still squeezed into the clip and fishing effectively. If you let the wire line and downrigger ball go down without enough forward motion in the boat, or too quickly, it gets tangled or the fishing line will release from the clip before you get to your desired depth. You will then have to crank the wire line and ball back up to the surface, re-attach the fishing line into the clip and start all over with the decent. However, we will give you all the training you need and after you master this simple process, downrigger fishing is perhaps the easiest and most productive way to catch lots of salmon. Not as many big trophy salmon, for sure, but LOTS of salmon.

As for the gear, there is no lead weight permanently attached to your line, the 10lbs. cannonball of the downrigger does that. First we use a colourful (green or purple) shiny piece of plastic about 10 inches long called a flasher that spins to attract the salmon. Then below that about 36 inches, we use two main types of terminal tackle. Herring is still popular, but as you are typically going a bit faster (motor in gear all the time plus a bit more gas), we secure a whole herring (not cut plug, head on) in a plastic moulding called a teaser head. This ensures the perfect roll all the time, every time, and makes the bait more durable allowing you to troll at higher speed without ripping off your herring.

The other main terminal tackle is the hoochie. This is a simple plastic squid like bait that seems to catch salmon all day, everyday at any depth. The favoured hoochie colour is white but everything seems to work.

The whole concept of the downriggers is to get you down to deeper depths when the fish are not biting at the surface using the traditional trolling and mooching technique. When the fish hits you don't have to feed out line and try and finesse the fish to "take" the bait. When you see the bite you simply grab the rod from the holder, set the hook which releases the line from the clip and it is fish on!

The other advantage of the downriggers is that it allows you to go faster and cover more distance to "find" the fish. Make no mistake, there is nothing better than light tackle topwater fishing using our tradition 4-6 oz lead weight and a cut plug herring. However, the addition of the downriggers to the fleet has allowed us to get down to deeper depths, where the salmon go when they are not biting on the surface. We now catch fish all day long, every day, all day regardless of wind, tide, current, angler skill level and the rest. The bite is always on at the Sportsman's Club and, as many of our long time return guests know, you can catch them using any method you please but you WILL catch them!

For more information on fishing with downriggers go to:
Scotty's - Fishing Tips
Coast Side Fishing Club - Trolling for Salmon with Downriggers