Here’s a little video I shot to kinda get you started understanding how float fishing for salmon & steelhead works…

Okay, so what do Jessica Alba and a driftboat on B.C.’s Kitimat River have in common? Well, aside from a nice fantasy I just had…nothing. It’s just that we’re going to talk about sinkers for drift fishing this time around and I knew I had to get you sucked in somehow! Sinkers aren’t exactly the most exciting topic on the planet, but there’s a lot you really need to know.

So, my cheap advertising campaign aside, let’s get down to it. A lot of getting a proper presentation when drift fishing stems from your sinker selection, so you really need to pick the right stuff. In the old days, choosing which sinker to use was simple – there was pencil lead and, well, pencil lead and that was it. Now, we’ve got quite a few options to choose from. Let’s take a look at the three I use and the pros and cons of each.

SLINKIES

When they first burst upon the drift fishing scene some 20 years ago, Slinkies were about the single greatest invention steelheaders had seen since the introduction of the graphite rod. In case you’ve been vacationing in Katmandu for the past couple decades, Slinkies are made from buckshot stuffed, single file, into parachute cord. The end result is a sinker that is flexible and extremely snag-resistant. As a testament to their effectiveness, Slinkies remain extremely popular today.

Because of their ability to fend off snags, Slinkies are staples on rocky rivers with nasty, uneven bottoms but they work just fine on smooth cobble riverbeds as well. They don’t get down as quickly as pencil lead, but they tend to slide along – rather than pound – the bottom, which gives your bait a nice “just drifting along with the current” presentation.

As a Slinky taps along the bottom, the feeling you get at the rod tip is quite a bit softer than if you were using lead. For that reason, inexperienced steelheaders sometimes find them difficult to use because the distinction between a bottom bounce and a bit isn’t as clear. But, it gets easier with time. Stick with it and you’ll quickly become a believer.

Slinkies work great for bank fishing, free-drifting, side-gliding and boondogging in most spots – except situations in which you need to get down immediately or in heavily wooded streams. I like long, slim Slinkies made from .210 gauge shot when I’m fishing waters with grabby bottoms and magnum .250 shot when I’m working big, heavy water.

PENCIL LEAD

While it seems like pencil lead has been left in the dust by the popularity of sinkers like Slinkies, this oldie but goodie still has its use.

The greatest attribute of pencil lead is its ability to get down to the bottom in a hurry. This makes it the ideal choice when you’re fishing in very swift and/or deep water and it’s also great for pounding short, deep slots that require immediate bottom contact. Pencil lead transmits a very distinct “tap-tap-tap” to the rod tip when it’s bouncing along the bottom, so it allows you to very easily tell if your offerings are getting down or not. It works well when you’re drifting fishing off the bank or boondogging free-drifting from a sled.

The downside to straight lead is it is extremely grabby and “sticks” to rocks. You’ll get snagged up more often with pencil lead than any other type of weight. Also, as it pounds the bottom, it can impart a bit of a herky-jerky action to your bait, which sometimes turns steelhead off. Because of it stickiness, lead also drifts slower than other sinkers – which is an advantage in cold, off-colored water and negative factor when you’re fishing warmer flows.

Pencil lead seems to snag less than do Slinkies in woody areas and is also a good choice in heavily-fished areas like Blue Creek on the Cowlitz. . In areas of heavy fishing pressure where anglers lose lots of gear, pencil lead works best because hooks caught in the rocks can easily impale Slinkies. Catch your Slinky on a derelict hook anchored to the bottom and you’re probably going to lose your entire rig.

In summary, I mainly use pencil lead – usually solid core 3/16 size – when getting a deep, slow presentation is my main goal. I can get away with it, I prefer Slinkies or Sploosh Balls because I feel I get a more natural drift with them.

SPLOOSH BALLS

Sploosh what?? These things have taken the Nor Cal coast by storm…they’re black plastic balls with a barrel swivel embedded in the top. Sploosh Balls are virtually snag free, glide beautifully along the bottom and are particularly useful in long, slow runs and shallow tailouts where other sinkers would lose momentum and hang up. The wide profile and relatively light body weight of a sploosh ball allows it to go where other sinkers can’t. I absolutely love them for side-gliding and have gone an entire winter season without losing more than a dozen of the things!

You can drift Sploosh Balls very swiftly, so they’re a good choice when you’re fishing low water conditions and trying to stay ahead of the pack of boats – or when the water temps are up and the fish are active.

But there are a few inherent problems with Splooshers, too. First of all, they’re too wide and light to effectively be fished from shore in most cases. It takes some practice to get the feel for the way they drift, and you should know that when fished on a sliding rig, they have a tendency to “roll” up the line towards the boat. And since they’re plastic, it also takes longer for these sinkers to get down near the bottom so you need to set up for a drift a little earlier than you normally would.

In instances where the sploosh rig just isn’t getting down, I’ll do a little aftermarket upgrading by adding some lead to them. The best method involves drilling out the bottom of the ball with a 3/16-inch bit and inserting a section of 3/16 pencil lead into the hole (just be sure all you lead pieces are the same length). Or instead of pencil lead, you can add 2 to 4 buckshot to the hole. With a “lead butt” model, you can cover lots of different situations and be pretty assured you won’t burn through a lot of sinkers.

FINAL THOUGHT

Okay, so enough about sinkers already! Let’s end on a high note and get back to Jessica and the driftboat. Upon further reflection, I’m thinking we ought to switch the B.C. driftboat to a flats boat in the Bahamas….

Sometimes you’d swear coho salmon are related to piranhas..they’ll attack anything you put in their collective paths with reckless abandon. In other instances, however, they can be the most coy, brooding and annoyingly moody critters on planet earth.

Luckily, there’s a little secrete weapon you can hit ‘em with that seems to turn on even the most lockjawed silvers…

Read all about it in my article in the current issue of FISH ALASKA Magazine

Kinda like peanut butter & chocolate…”two great tastes that taste great together,” the herring and Spin-N-Glo rig combines two of the best all-time salmon producers into one package…and is the hottest thing going right now for Columbia River spring Chinook.

Northwest icon and fishing god, Buzz Ramsey shows us how to rig this clever springer killer over at Northwest Wild Country.

Headed for a river that has salmon in it this summer and fall? Take some diver & bait rigs with you — it’s a super easy and extremely deadly technique that you can pick up in no time!

While there are several good ways to get a big, juicy glob of hot red sulfite eggs (or sand shrimp) down in the faces of river salmon, the ol’ diver and bait is often the first one to which I turn.

Salmon Candy

Now, let’s take a look at rigging up:

Divers

Well, first I guess we better take a look at the major component of this whole deal: the diver. There are a couple ways you can go, here: either run hookless plugs like Hot-N-Tots or Mud Bugs painted black or metallic green or clear Brad’s Bait Divers (looks almost identical to the old STORM Hot-N-Tots) or go with Luhr Jensen’s Jet Divers.

Jet Diver (top) and a Brad's

I run Jet Divers almost all of the time. They’re much more stable than most plugs, so they get down deep and stay there. On my home waters, the size No. 20 (dives to 20 feet) is the staple, though there are certain spots that require me to bump up to the No. 30. On rivers like the Kenai and Columbia, the size No. 40 and even the 50-foot Jumbo Jet models are popular.

Though Luhr Jensen manufacturers Jet Divers in a wide array of exciting colors, I prefer the boring, plain-jane clear ones most of the time (pink crystal is Plan B if I can find the transparent ones). I just think that the less junk the fish see, the better off you are. I do have friends, however, who swear that they get more bites when using metallic blue divers.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em...a diver caught king!

Jet Divers don’t need tuning and generally run great right out of the box. There are a couple things you can do however, to make them even run better. As soon as I get a new one, I’ll flip it belly up and twist off the plastic tab and crane swivel with a set of needle nose pliers. I always run divers off a dropper, so there’s simply no need for that extra stuff hanging off the bottom. There are also times when I’ll carefully take a file to the top edge of the diver’s wings to give it a little steeper diving angle – for those tight spots when I need to get my gear as straight down as possible.

Since Jet Divers don’t snag all that often, I wear more of them out than I lose. The biggest problem that I encounter is a crack in one of the wings. Unless you’re looking specifically for a crack, you may not notice it – until your driver starts doing corkscrews in the water and tangles up all your other lines. When you find you have a cracked wing, toss the entire unit it in the garbage.

Occasionally, you’ll also find water seeping into your diver’s body, which is often caused by a hairline crack (from the diver smacking the side of the boat or a fish flopping on it in the net). It’s hard to get he water back out of such a thin fracture, but you can take a tiny drill bit and make a hole towards the back of the diver to drain it. After everything dries out, hit the drill hole with epoxy and cover the crack with crazy glue.

Rigging the Diver

As I noted earlier, it’s best to run divers off dropper lines. I’ll make my drop line 12 inches to 3 feet in length, depending on the conditions. As a basic rule of thumb, go with a shorter length in fast water; longer when you’re fishing slower, deeper water.

The next step is to decide how to tie your dropper leader to your main line and you have two choices: hard-tied or on a slider. In most cases, I run my divers on sliders – in other words, I’ll tie the opposite end of my dropper line to a crane swivel and then run the main line through it. Next, I’ll slide 2-4 plastic beads up the mainline and then tie another crane swivel to the tag end. To the opposite end of that swivel, goes the bait leader. The swivel and beads between the main line and leader keep the diver from sliding down to the bait but it is free to move up the line (towards the rod).

When a fish grabs your bait, he’ll feel less resistance when the diver’s free-sliding. A sliding rig is also a good thing if you happen to get your diver caught in the net while attempting to scoop the fish. Though your diver’s tangled up in the mesh, the fish can still run without the hooks getting ripped out of its mouth.

And if you happen to break off on a fish or snag, there’s a chance your diver will float to the surface, where you can recover it – no small victory considering these things go for about $7 a pop these days!

A case can be made for fixed rigs as well, however, especially when you have inexperienced anglers on board. One of the downsides of a diver on a sliding rig occurs when the hooks get snagged. As the boat continues to back downstream, the diver keeps going, working on the bow between the rod tip and the snag. A trained eye can tell something’s amiss, but a rookie may not know anything’s wrong until his line’s upstream of the boat….arrrgh! You can fix this problem by tying your mainline, leader and dropper all to a three-way swivel.

Though they/ve long been treated like the red-headed stepchildren of the salmon world, chum salmon are starting to gain a pretty dedicated following these days. When you take a closer look, it’s easy to see why — chums are plentiful and can sometimes top 20 pounds; they bite great and are absolutely tenacious when hooked.

The only real downside to them is they are not as tasty as kings, reds and silvers. But that’s really not a problem — just keep a couple reds for the freezer and then have a ball catching and releasing chums all day long!

Chum salmon are widely distributed throughout Alaska and they can be found in freshwater streams from early June to as late as mid-October, depending on the area. Generally speaking however, the further north you go, the later the run and vise-versa as you head south.

Locating Chum

The biggest key to finding chums is to remember that they are lazy. Most of the time you’ll find them lounging in the soft water along the river’s margins and well out of the main current. They also love gently-moving flats below riffles that are 3 to 7 feet deep, the mouths of tributary streams and slow, deep pools.

Shore Fishing

Since chums usually hold towards the edges of a river, they’re often easy marks for bank anglers — though boaters can catch plenty of them as well.

From shore, there’s probably nothing more effective for chums than a 3/8-ounce hot pink, black or purple marabou jig fished under an adjustable slip float. For some reason, doggies absolutely go crazy for this rig. Set your jig to run 1 to 3 feet off the bottom and allow it to drift with the current, mending the line whenever necessary to avoid unnatural drag. Keep an eye on your float to make sure that it is not leaning up or downstream. If it’s not floating perfectly straight up and down, you’re jig could be dragging the bottom or you may have a bow in the line that’s causing too much drag.

Spinners and spoons can also be extremely effective on chums. Throw hot pink size No. 3 or 4 Blue Fox Super Vibrax spinners with silver blades or silver body/pink inlay Pixee spoons through slow-moving flats and you’ll be in chum city. Keep the hardware slowly moving just off the bottom and make sure you’ve got a good grip on your stick. The hits are often fierce when fishing this way!

Since most people release chum, it’s not a bad idea to remove the stock trebles from your lures and switch them out with single barbless siwash hooks. With singles, you’ll lose fewer lures to snags and they’re much easer to remove from fish.

You can also catch plenty of chum on fly gear and the real beauty of the sport is that you don’t need to match any hatch. Chums will routinely attack big bright flies and patterns like black or pink Bunny Leeches are about all you’ll need to be successful. Fish these patterns “on the swing” with sinking line and you’re in business.

Gearing Up

Chum have a knack for busting rods and burning up reels, so you’ll want to use a quality outfit when chasing them.

When fishing with jigs and floats, a 10.5-foot rod is a good choice as the length will help you mend the line. You can go with a spinning or casting reel here, just be sure it has a quality drag! For float fishing, braided line is superior to mono as it floats higher and is easier to mend.

Use an 8 ½ - to 9 ½ - foot rod with a fairly fast action and a lot of backbone for tossing spoons and spinners. Baitcasting outfits are preferable for this method because they allow you to easily play out line to extend your drift, but spinning gear will suffice. Either way, spool up with nothing lighter than 12-pound mono.

For backtrolling, you need a rod that has a soft tip so that the fish can yank down on it without feeling a lot of resistance, but it must also be stout through the lower two-thirds of its length. Levelwind reels are the only way to go here and you can fill them with 17- to 25-pound mono or 50-pound braid (make sure to use a mono or fluorocarbon leader when using braided line).

If you’re looking to hook up on fly gear, go with a 9-weight rod and a quality reel with a strong drag. Also, it pays to have an assortment of lines on hand to match river conditions. On large waters, shooting heads are necessary to get flies near the bottom, while you can get away with sink tips and even floating lines on smaller creeks and streams. Use a 3- to 6-foot section of 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon for your leader and you’re ready to go.