Fishing Articles
Fish Fighting: Chinook Salmon!
Once they pick a direction they'll tear up the water
making your fishing reel scream!
Timothy Kusherets
One of the great things about fishing is learning how each species
of fish will fight...as a general rule of thumb. This great looking
Black-mouth, a.k.a. Chinook salmon, is the perfect representation
of what all early migrating Chinooks will look like as they make their
way inland. It is there natal stream agenda that drives them to aggressive
feeding patterns and subsequent spectacular fights found at the end
of a line.
Chinook, also called king and tyee (over 30 pounds) is the largest
of all salmon, not to be confused with Atlantic Salmon referred to as
"King of Salmon. The mouth and gum line of chinook salmon are entirely
black. The spawning colors range from golden brown to pine green. There
are spots on the tail from the top to the bottom of it. All salmon have
a forked tail. There are thirteen or more rays on the anal fin. They
prefer artificial lures that resemble candlefish and anchovies; even
during the height of feeding they will still take lures since they resemble
their diet so closely. During overcast days your offering should reflect
the light penetration of which the salmon is gravitating. The darker
the day is the darker your offering should be; conversely, the brighter
the day is the brighter the offering should be.
One of the best things about fighting king salmon is you don’t
have to ask any if the bending rod tip is a hit; the screaming drag
will tell you all you need to know. The run is so strong that they almost
always set the hook for you. Finding locations where Chinook hold during
the day is the best bet to fishing for them at night. The offerings
to use during dark hours are lures that flutter with a slow retrieval.
It is best to have lures that glow during overcast evenings so they
can see the offering as well as feel the sonic vibrations. While in
saltwater the king salmon picks one of two directions only and the direction
is contingent on the gravitation of which you hook them. If you troll
deep when the bite comes the pin to the downrigger is pulled and it
will come straight up to the surface picking one direction and make
a huge run before they relent. Hooking into a Chinook in shallower water
the runs will almost always be longer and stronger. By lightly placing
your thumb or palm on the spool of the reel you can add pressure to
the drag without the threat of snapping your line, but only do it for
a few seconds at a time. The second your reel stops paying out line,
reel in the slack, only stopping when the drag starts to sing again.
When Chinook acclimate to freshwater, and they are still in the estuary
where they will stop feeding but will still strike large spinning lures
that offer profiles that trigger an aggravated response. Red and dark
green are the best colors to use. The depth in which they gravitate
will be near the floor of the bay during the day and just below the
surface at dawn and dusk. After they have gone into the rivers and creeks
Chinook will go to the deepest and fastest water they can find. Many
times you will not aware of them because the water they hold in will
be fast and deep but the water in which they hold will be slow underneath
fast water; is a seam of water that divides the fast from the slow.
The offerings you need to present them with should either be corkies
or spoons, though they can be fished with large flies. Fishing for Chinook
in rivers requires heavier than normal weight to get down to them. The
colors they prefer are red and cerise pink. The size of the corkie should
not go above a size 8. Notice that even as you fight them in the rivers
they will stay in the fast water. Ordinarily they will pick one direction
and make a significant run before they do their best to hold in one
spot. After you pull them out of the fast water the fight becomes less
intense each time you are able to gain ground. It becomes a waiting
game as you pull them into slower water and battle each run; the lighter
your line is the longer it will take to pull them in. “Horsing”
Chinook with heavy test still runs the risk of throwing the hook, pulling
the hook out of it, or breaking the line entirely. Free-bailing a big
fish is the last thing a fisherman wants to do, but fish that make tearing
runs for the riffles have a real opportunity of spooling and the only
way to prevent it from happening is to flip the bail (carriage) over.
Line that is free-bailed will get in front of fish and coax them into
turning to the opposite direction; all fish tend to pull in the opposite
direction of resistance which is exactly the thing to turn them if there
is not option left to a fishermen being spooled. Most of the time fish
will come back but fish that are snagged will continue down the river
and in that case it’s best break off the line rather than get
spooled. Fish that are snagged have a distinctive sluggishness about
them that tells the fisherman something is wrong. Fighting a fish that
is completely out of control is, more often than not, snagged.
© Timothy Kusherets 2008/10
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