Help with Mooching and Jigging

I understand the gear.  I think I understand the techniques, but my lack of success has me wondering.  

Let's say I mark a school of likely salmon around a bait ball, and I decide to jig.  I rig up my favorite Pt. Wilson dart and let it drop.  Now what?  Simply let it hit bottom and reel it back up?  

Let's say the wind is blowing a bit and/or I'm drifting with the tide.   I'm rigged with a cut plug and a 6 ounce banana sinker on a slip or a cannonball on a dropper, and I decide to mooch.  If I simply drop the rig to the bottom the leader is likely to foul on the line as it goes down, so do I get up some speed and deploy as a troll, then let it drift to the bottom?  So my gear is down.   Now what?  Am I bouncing the sinker off the bottom?  I am just drifting along singing a song?  

Work it!!!

Jig it, twitch it, pop it, sweep it, reel it, pause it, drop it and do it all over again.

You really don't want to just let it sit still.

One mooching technique that is quite simple is just a vertical troll.  Drop it to the bottom, reel it up, lather rinse repeat.  Vary your drop and reel speeds.  If you spot something on the finder (bait schools, fish marks) then concentrate on that zone or maybe a +/- 20 foot zone from the mark.

Or Trooch it.  Drop it to the bottom, paddle until you line comes up, then stop paddling and let it sink back down to the bottom.

-Allen

Or Trooch it.  Drop it to the bottom, paddle until you line comes up, then stop paddling and let it sink back down to the bottom.

Trooch it is fun to say.  Didn't Salt N Pepa have a hit about doing that in the eighties?  "Trooch it real good."

Trooch it is fun to say.  Didn't Salt N Pepa have a hit about doing that in the eighties?  "Trooch it real good."
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TTTRRROOoooccchhh...

Fark.  Now I have that stupid some in my head.  You had to do that, didn't you?   

-Allen

This site is informative...

http://www.salmonuniversity.com/ol_buzz_bombing_Salmon_Rudnick.html

SwiftDraw

just like they said, to jig just put on your favorite dart, drop it to the bottom, reel up four or five cranks, and then commence with jigging.  lift your rod tip 4-5 feet quickly and let it fall, but don't drop your tip too fast as it falls.  you don't want too much slack to form as you drop it.  maybe a foot max.  the fish will usually pick it up on the fall and then when you go to lift your rod tip, you feel the pressure and it's fish on!  set the hook and fight the little bugger.  2.25oz glow/chrome Pt Wilson is my favorite. 

I haven't gotten mooching down yet.  I have a bunch of non-bait lures i want to try, just haven't had the chance.  last time i tried, i got myself stranded for two hours.   Silvers will be at Brown's
Point soon though!

One mooching technique that is quite simple is just a vertical troll.  Drop it to the bottom, reel it up, lather rinse repeat.  Vary your drop and reel speeds.  If you spot something on the finder (bait schools, fish marks) then concentrate on that zone or maybe a +/- 20 foot zone from the mark.

Or Trooch it.  Drop it to the bottom, paddle until your line comes up, then stop paddling and let it sink back down to the bottom.

How do y'all prevent the line from fouling when dropping a mooching rig?  When jigging the weight is at the end of the line and leads it down.   When mooching the weight leads, and the bait gets pulled down trailing above the weight along side the line.  Often the leader fouls on the line.   I've been deploying the mooching gear while moving along to prevent this, so I've been trooching, but usually not all the way to the bottom since I've been seeing fish in the middle of the water column rather than hugging the bottom.  Who prefers straight mooching and who prefers trooching?  

This site is informative...

http://www.salmonuniversity.com/ol_buzz_bombing_Salmon_Rudnick.html

Terry Rudnick is a wealth of information.  Here's another nice article from Terry:

http://www.salmonuniversity.com/Mooch_jig_troll.html

Line fouling isn't usually an issue for me.  It's not something I do anything special about.  So I'm not sure what to tell you.   

-Allen

You should be mooching with the tidal currents to help roll your herring. With that said, control your drop speed with a little thumb pressure and the current will help your bait stay clear of your line. If you are still fouling your line, drop slower still.

 The way that I was taught to mooch was to use as light a banana weight as possible to get the desired 45 degree angle for kings and the 60 degree angle for silvers. To avoid tangling don't free spool to the depth that you want to reach. Instead you feed line out down stream gradually. You can either count pulls to keep track of depth or use a line counter reel.
 Choosing the method of presenting the bait is basically determined by the area fished. The down tide eddies behind points (horizontal eddies), sharp drop offs (vertical eddies), kelp edges, or off shore bait balls. You can dead drift at a determined depth, work the entire water column, or motor (paddle/pedal) mooch).
 Learn to properly plug cut herring. The double bevel so the bait spins with the cut end rotating on the same axis as the tail. Learn proper hook placement so the bait is pulled properly and is balanced. I've found that the best bait rotation for most feeding salmon is a tight drill bit roll with a slower rotation for kings, and a faster rotation for silvers. I save the big slow roll for motor mooching black & purple sized baits in BC and Alaska for the big pig smilies.
 For me jigs are for when there are too many dogfish around or the bait in the area is needlefish and candlefish. Match the hatch and pound the bottom with Pt Wilson dart type lures. Use the smallest wt that you can keep near bottom at a reasonable angle (vertical to max 45 degrees). I also catch a lot of salmon by casting metal like rotators and buzz bombs and fishing them horizontally and not vertically. Again its fishing an area that conducive to fishing metal rather than just blindly hucking the jigs everywhere willy nilly.
 I prefer being a bait thug but fish the metal when the dogfish are pests, kings are digging in the mud for candle and needle fish, or silvers and pinks are running the rips.
 

Great stuff!

Another thing I do not understand about mooching is the source of the relative movement?  For example, a balloon drifting in a 10 knot wind does not feel the wind.  The balloon's airspeed is zero.  A line dropped from the balloon would hang straight down. 

Likewise, if I am drifting with the tide I am moving at the same speed and direction as the water.  There is no relative motion and my line and cut plug should just hang there without rolling.

Tidal movement is not constant from surface to bottom.  Or even from one part of the surface to another part like in tide rips.

-Allen

Tidal movement is not constant from surface to bottom.  Or even from one part of the surface to another part like in tide rips.

Of course.  That is also true of the air.  Air moves more slowly closer to the ground due to friction.  So in my balloon example if the rope was long enough and the balloon high enough the rope should be curving back along our ground track.  Thanks. 

Thanks for the help.  Although I'm not catching salmon I do seem to have figured out the rigging issues I was having.  I swapped out all my swivels for new ball bearing swivels, and changed exclusively to a cannon ball sinker on a dropper and slider for both trolling and mooching.  Just one twisted up leader in 6 hours of fishing - seaweed had fouled the swivel.  I'm using 10# fluoro for the dropper and 20# fluoro for the leader.  This lets me break off the sinker if necessary.