Get your Mooch On!

With the huge return of Coho this year, it's a great time to get your mooch on.  This is by far my favorite way to catch salmon.  Trolling can be a little impersonal and relies on your forward momentum for the hook set.  Mooching allows you to hand feed your bait to the Salmon and makes it a much more personal and involved experience.  Here's a little graphic tutorial I put together a couple of year ago on mooching at B10.  This technique works just as well in the ocean.
 


If you like this kind of stuff, please subscribe to my channel.

Thanks!
-Mark-

Great video, Mark!   Mooching is definitely an effective technique.  The coho and chinook will take your offering if you're near feeding fish.

One suggestion i have received for ocean fishing is to only use one hook instead of the standard two hook rig while fishing for coho this time of year.  There are a large number of wild coho, and removing two hooks from a wild fish can be problematic.  With one hook, it's quite easy to remove the barbless hook without netting the fish and that one hook is usually in the mouth not the gills, so the wild fish has a much higher likelihood of survival. 

One suggestion i have received for ocean fishing is to only use one hook instead of the standard two hook rig while fishing for coho this time of year.  There are a large number of wild coho, and removing two hooks from a wild fish can be problematic.  With one hook, it's quite easy to remove the barbless hook without netting the fish and that one hook is usually in the mouth not the gills, so the wild fish has a much higher likelihood of survival. 

Great advice Barb!

It is SO FUN when you have a salmon take your bait and you're holding the rod   

How deep are you typically running these? Like right now are you only going down 15 to 20 feet similar to the depth you would troll?

How deep are you typically running these? Like right now are you only going down 15 to 20 feet similar to the depth you would troll?

That all depends on what I'm seeing on the fishfinder.  I generally won't even bother mooching until I'm seeing multiple marks.  In deeper water, if I'm seeing fish at 20', I'll make that the bottom of my stroke.  If I'm in shallow water, I'll stop a leader length short of the bottom so when I pause, the bait flutters to within inches of the bottom.

In the video, I'm targeting fish at 15'.  The one I hook, came up half that distance to take my bait.

Good question!  Keep em coming.

-Mark- 

Thanks for posting this. I have not been putting enough action on my rod.

What is everyone's take on that action? Some people advocate not moving it at all and then there is the big jig like in this video.

My prior standard was a kind of "paddle mooch". 4 stokes and let it settle. Repeat. I've been mostly trolling lately as the dogfish were loving my herring.

What is everyone's take on that action? Some people advocate not moving it at all and then there is the big jig like in this video.

Salmon, especially Chinook, will take a static bait.  This is more like bobber fishing.  The reason I don't like this is because a salmon needs to basically run into your bait to find it. 
Coho really respond to movement so the fluttering of a falling herring or iron gets their attention and draws them in from a distance. 

One thing I forgot to mention in the video is that it's good to have a little bit of motion or current so that your bait doesn't twist around the mainline on the drop.  This is why you see me take a back stroke as I drop my bait.

I hope that helps!

Here's a mooched Ho from PC last month. I watched the fish come up to greet my falling bait.  The fish let go but followed the herring as it spun back toward the surface and committed hard right before the bass hookset.  Lol!

How far up into tidewater would you expect mooching to still be effective ?

I guess what I'm asking is whether this is something you can use in upper bays and tidal rivers.

Thanks in advance.

I don't know how far upriver this is effective but at some point it just becomes jigging. 😂

I don't know how far upriver this is effective but at some point it just becomes jigging. 😂

You know, I almost put that idea out there - if they'll take a jig upriver, why wouldn't they take a jigged herring ? Maybe downsize to a smaller anchovy or something ?

Imma try it out this year. Thanks for the great video lesson !

Right on, I will definitely start jigging/motor mooching a bit more - I like the way it will cover more water column as well.             

The other thing that has me perplexed is the two schools of thought between feeding them line when you feel the initial hit versus immediately starting to tighten up the line.

I was trying the feed method for my last X sessions and I've essentially come up with no fish or lost bait pretty much every time. I'm convinced at least a couple of these were salmon and not dogs or dabs or whatever else but I will swap to the immediate, deliberate but slow reeling once the first peck happens to see if this will improve my hookups.