Salmon fishing tips needed...

ok now my next question for everyone is how does one fish for salmon out of a kayak besides the obvious jigging or mooching?  Can you troll?  If so how would you rig your gear up (and if possible not use a downrigger)?  Cause I'll be honest I've only fished for trout in lake chelan many moons ago in a kayak and dont remember how I did it...  so yeah I need some help in that area to say the least...

I usually mooch herring with 3-8 oz sinkers, depending on where I'm fishing.  Sometimes, I'll take a fly rod along if I think there will be silvers or humpies near the surface. 

For salmon, trolling is the only way to go. You can vary depth for each species depending on weight, wind, current and heading. Minimum weight for Puget Sound is 3 oz. you can easily go up to 10 oz. Mostly I use a simple rig with plug cut herring and a 4 oz banana sinker. You can troll any spinner or lure with this same setup. On occasion you can add a flasher too.
Humpies love to be mooched. This season I'll troll around for Chinook or Coho as much as my arms can stand then just relax and tend to a pink or two. Don't forget to crimp those barbs and keep a copy of the regs.
I have been thinking of getting a chute to slow down the wind effect. Anyone out there have any experience with a chute?

Kurt

I've lot's of experience with chutes, and I think they're almost essential, especially for bottomfishing. I made mine, (out of an old dress )but places like Joe's Outdoors and Cabela's sell them fairly cheaply.

I'm not a very big fan of trolling, even in my rowboat. I don't mind a couple of ounces of lead for mooching, but trolling much more is a pain, IMO. The best trollers are constantly adjusting their depth to stay close to the bottom. That's kind of difficult when you're stopping and starting, dropping your oars or paddle, and then starting again. Not such a big deal for silvers or pinks.

The best trollers are constantly adjusting their depth to stay close to the bottom. That's kind of difficult when you're stopping and starting, dropping your oars or paddle, and then starting again.

Not a problem with a Hobie

So true, Threeweight. I'm planning to set up a sculling oar for my rowboat, so that I can propel myself with one arm/hand, leaving the other to manage my line.

A while back I saw an article in Woodenboat magazine, showing a kind of homebuilt foot system. Essentially, it was a fin that hung off the back of a yak that was swung back and forth by the feet pushing against a pivoting bar. The designer envisioned the bottom half of a fish, and added a couple of small fins to the bottom of his boat, so that the fin didn't just wag the boat back and forth. The (tail)fin had a rigid leading edge but used a flexible sheet of plastic for most of the area. When the fin was stroked, the plastic would curve from the effort the way a sail will take a curve from the force of the wind.

More often than not I'll just go with a standard mooching setup and 4-6 ounces of lead, which I will troll or mooch, or both (trooch!) ... troll, stop, let sink, troll, ... etc.

I find that I tend to have to concentrate from going to fast, unless I'm targeting silvers, in which case I don't think you can troll too fast.  In that case, I worry more about depth control and keeping the bait at the depth I think the silvers are.

-Allen

Depth control, depth control, depth control,,,,
hmmmm, sounds like a job for a small downrigger. 

Essentially, it was a fin that hung off the back of a yak that was swung back and forth by the feet pushing against a pivoting bar.,,,,The (tail)fin had a rigid leading edge but used a flexible sheet of plastic for most of the area. When the fin was stroked, the plastic would curve from the effort the way a sail will take a curve from the force of the wind

Pisco,
there is a name for that,,,the Hobie mirage drive   Seriously (sorta), that is exactly how the hobie system works. I think Hobie's imagineer was thinking about penguins though. Their next big trick is to figure out how to rotate the fin around the leading edge so you can have a reverse gear. Hmmmm, I’ll have to think about that for a minute.

http://www.hobiecat.com/kayaking/miragedrive.html

Hmmmm, me thinks I should spend more time fishing and less time thinking 

Any of you guys use a three way rig to keep your lure/bait at depth?  With braided line and pencil lead for weight it seems to me that it would cut through the water pretty well.

With the 3-way you could tap bottom once in a while to make sure it's near bottom or with a line counter reel and a constant speed (once you find the right depth) you could keep it in the strike zone.for suspended fish.

It'd be like a small downrigger, and with the pencil lead at the bottom of the rig it'd be pretty snag resistant.

Just an idea from the east coast where we don't even have salmon.

What you describe is essentially the system we use on the bays in Oregon for salmon, and in the Columbia.

Mainline to three way swivel (or a wire spreader swivel).  Add 24-48" of h heavy leader (25# or so mono) behind the swivel.  Add 12" or so of much lighter line (6-10#) off the "down" eye of the swivel.  To that we tie on a sinker of the appropriate weight for the depth/speed of current you are trolling. 

Generally don't cast this rig, just let it out on slack line into the current (or as you troll).  My salmon experience is all bay fishing, and the water generally isn't that deep (15-20' max), so we let out slack as we troll till you can feel the sinker knocking along the bottom.  Crank up a couple feet of line then (until the sinker is no longer tapping bottom) and you are in business for trolling. 

Nice thing about this set up is the sinker almost always makes contact before your spinner or bait.  If it snags up, it is on lighter mono so you can break it off without losing the expensive gear.

Not sure how well this set up would work in really deep water.

To take another stab at answering the original question, there are a lot of different techniques, for widely varying conditions. Rivers and bays are going to be much different from fishing, say, the San Juan Islands. Species differences are going to lead to different techniques and tackle, too.

Open water trolling, like for immature kings/blackmouth, is often done at 100-200 down, and at a fair clip, 2.5-3.2mph. Mature kings will frequently be shallower, at least at first light, and are little lazier, liking the 2.0-2.5 speeds. My point is that trolling at 100+, at a good clip, takes a lot more than pencil lead. In the old pre-downrigger days, it wasn't unusual to use 24oz balls (on a sinker release) when fishing for winter blackmouth, in Puget Sound. Add a big flasher, and it's a load to tow. Not much fun in the fight department, either. Sometimes we would hook little "shakers" and never notice till we retrieved our gear.

I'm a fan of mooching and jigging, for use of light gear and their effectiveness. The important thing is to find the correct locations for each technique.

Redfish85- Maybe if you told us where, and what species you want to target, we can give you more specific recommendations

Is there somewhere online one could learn about "mooching"?  I had never even heard of this until I started reading about fishing in the Pacific Northwest and I haven't really been able to find a tutorial or much information on how to do it.

What type of jigs/jigging tecnique do you use in deep water for salmon?  Anybody use butterfly jigs like they do in Hawaii?

I thought I remembered a mooching article at Salmon U but this link is just EXCELLENT kayak fishing advice intended for stinkpots (that's southern yak-speak for boats with motors    )

http://www.fishingnw.com/index.php?name=News&file=print&sid=199


These next few are three of 7600 returns from altavista when I put in "mooching rig how to"
The search engine is your friend,,,

http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/angling/protalk/reid/mooch.phtml

http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CFPage?CMID=&objectID=30223&langId=-1&mode=article&pageView=image&catalogId=10001&partNumber=&storeId=10151&deptId=000000000&categoryId=000000000&jumpToPage=1&currentPage=0&subdeptId=000000000

http://www.fishingnw.com/index.php?name=News&file=print&sid=199

Nice links FFTW. I can't really add anything since I've yet to pull up a Salmon off the yak but I think I can apply my deep water lake trolling techniques. I use a trolling diver (Pink Lady) with some light lake flashers then some leader to the lure. The reason I like this setup over using weights is that once you do get a hit it's much funner without all the weight on the line. Plus even if you do get a small fish it trips and you're not dragging around a dink to it's death. A lot of people don't like to use them because they do cause drag and you do have to work harder when you paddle (or peddle) but I enjoy the workout so works for me when I'm into it.

I'm really into getting everything ready and will be set for the opener. I'm gonna have fun tryin all the methods!
Z

For salmon jigging, I have a few preferred lures.

Buzzbombs and Zzingers- http://www.buzzbombzzinger.com/
I really like the holographic finishes.

Pt. Wilson Darts- http://www.dartjigs.com/
The white is tops, with green/chrome and green/pearl next.

All these lures can be used for beach fishing, too.