How To

 HOW TO#3 Sturgeon Hide and Seek….

I spend a great deal of time searching for Sturgeon. If you fish an area that is known for spotty Sturgeon fishing, you can optimize your time by moving around. I have my “go to” spots that I hit every time I’m on the water. I know fish hang out there and they always produce. And what I’ve realized is I waste a lot of time, waiting for a bite.  If the fish is there and it’s gonna bite, it will do it in fifteen minutes, any time after that I rarely get bit. Start high in the hole and give yourself a 40 foot wide column, they will smell it if they are there. Wait 15 minutes with good bait and move over to the next column, or move 200 feet downstream. Keep moving until you find the fish and it will pay off. If you keep working new water, like any fishery it pays off. Don’t get in the mindset that the fish will come to you, unless of course you are fishing in a major stream with a Sturgeon migration.

 Don’t be afraid to try new things for bait, ask yourself why that fish is in your river. Probably not for the abundance of Sand Shrimp. A friend of mine was having a bad day Sturgeon fishing last October. The two things they had plenty of were smoked salmon, and beer. They ran out of bait and started using smoked salmon skin. They started hitting fish….no s#$t! I’ve talked to a few anglers who fish the Fraser river, and they use whole skeins of humpy roe.

HOW TO#2-  You gotta go when fishing is tough….

Don’t allow yourself to get caught in the rut of just fishing when water conditions are perfect. If the river can be described as any shade of green it’s fishable. Sure the fishing may slow a bit, but it forces you to become a better angler. Another thing you gain, is knowledge of  a river. So many times you see people fishing the same stretch of a river the same way, day in, and day out. They usually are hit or miss on the fishing. They might catch fish on Tuesday and Thursday but Wednesday sucked. You have to adjust to river levels and weather conditions, and also angling pressure. If you fish a river several days in a row, and you know who the hot fisherman are on the river you can probably learn something from them. I remember one weekend, I was fishing the Cowlitz for Summer run, and Saturday fishing was red hot. I usually avoid the Blue Creek area and fish from Mission down. Anyway back to fishing, Saturday we had rain and cool temperatures, and we were knocking the fish dead in typical winter run water (4-8 feet of walking pace current). Everybody out there was killing them. Then on Sunday the Temp and Pressure came up and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, it was hot and dusty. Every body headed for the same water, and fishing was dead. So I kept drifting down the river and ran into Rich Bogle (R.I.P. Rich) fishing some whitewater above a slow pool. I mean WHITE water this stuff was flat out moving’. There wasn’t another boat around, and I knew this guy was no slouch. I watched him drift through it twice, and land two fish. When he netted his second fish he was done for the day with a boat load of happy limited out clients. I pulled up and talked to him to find out the scoop. Turns out the fish nose up in there when the sun gets too bright for them, plus the white water is oxygen rich and that’s where they go when the pools get warm. Everything you read about Steelheading tells you that, but when you get caught in the rut of doing the same thing every day, it numbs your Steelhead senses a little. I managed to go in the white water and pick a few fish off behind him that day, but it taught me a lesson.  So if you fish when the water is a little higher then normal you might surprise yourself. Think about it if you fish the same area all the time you have a pretty good feel of your surroundings. You might know where three large boulders are on the beach where you sat down and had lunch one day. If the waters up and you know where those boulders are at, you should have a 3-d picture in your head of that hole.

Fishing low water is one of the best things you can do if you want to learn a river. Low clear water means spooky fish, they know where to hide. If you go when it’s too low you see snags and rocks that you never knew were there. Also it gives you a chance to see all the little pockets that fish love to hang out in. If you go catch fish on a super low day, you will walk away confident in your angling abilities.

It’s been my experience that a river is never “too low” you will find larger concentrations of fish in the lower sections waiting for higher water to move on.  Another phrase is ”too high”, it happens but I think “too high” gets thrown around a little loosely. Avoid days of brown colored water and rapidly raising rivers, but anything green is fishable. The first day of  a receding river, right when it turns green is the sweet spot. The fish are all comfortable they have plenty of cover and the bite is usually on!

If you are new to Steelheading or just want to learn a new river, go fish it whenever you can. If your buddy calls and invites you GO! If you have a friend that catches a few more fish then the average bear, and he says “It’s a little high, but we might find a couple” do yourself a favor and GO. It’s not all about the numbers in Steelheading, if you are passionate enough about your sport and pay your dues a skunk day is just as rewarding as a 10 fish day. An accomplished angler never has an excuse for no fish, and rarely needs to brag. I hope I’ll get there someday.

Kris Jensen

HOW TO #1 - Free Drifting isn’t hard…

Free drifting is not a hard method to master. Anyone with a boat and a method to slow it down can do it. There is a lot of room for error in this method, and people still catch fish. There are some common mistakes made by experienced, and novice anglers alike that should be addressed.

First of all once you get on the river you need to decide what method you are planning to use. Some anglers just sum it up as “drift fishing’”, but there are variations of it that need to be recognized. All of which are a variation of boondogging, ask any Steelhead buff, and they will tell you about boondoggling origins, and how it got started right here on my home river the Skagit. Boondogging is a method that was and still is effective on most  steelhead rivers. To sum it up the boat is positioned directly in the “run” where you expect the fish to hold. Boondogging can be done with oars or a motor, however if you want to put a boat directly over a fish I think oars are the ticket. They make less noise and they don’t have to be working all the time. Now you position the boat broadside in the current, and everyone casts upstream allowing the boat to “drag your bait downstream. This is when dragging a bait works. Yes I said it dragging your bait works. But it works when the boat is in the same current speed the fish are. This is where many new anglers get confused. The method we like to call free drifting has a couple of key elements that make it productive, and dragging isn’t one of them.

If you are going to free drift you must get a few key things right. First of all match up all your gear. I mean rod lengths, line weight, lead size, line weight, leader length, line weight, and bait size. You need to have all of your gear to be identical to get a natural “free” drift through a run. This means when your buddy wants to bring his own “pole” you have to tell him what line to load it up with and ask if his ”pole” can cast very light weight long distances. I say “pole” because you know the type of guy I’m talking about here. Come on people, they’re rod’s,  pole’s catch crappie and hold up power lines. Now that you have all your gear matched up you need to decide what your going to fish. Thanks to our Canadian Steel heading Trend setters, a lot of people are throwing yarn at steelies, I’ll talk more about yarn later. If you want to fish yarn on one guy’s rod and bait on another you need to realize they will drift differently and they need to be positioned properly. Bait is heavier and usually has a larger profile so it drifts like a big turd down the river, and yarn flutters and moves with every subtle nuance of the current. So the likelihood of a big ole egg cluster slamming into a yarnie below it is high, put the bait in the back of the boat, or add a little more lead to bait rigs if you must fish both. Now here’s where I’ll stress current speed, current speed, current speed. Free drifting is when you match the rate at which the boat is drifting with the run of water you want to fish “outside in”. Your boat is positioned in the faster “outside” of the main river body, and your presentation is positioned “in” near the beach in the holding water. If  you could throw a buoy in the fish holding area and follow it with your boat it would be a great indicator. This is where people start to go wrong, many novice and experienced fisherman do not match the current speed. And if you pay attention it’s easy to notice, thanks to hi-vis lines people across the river can notice.

Here is an example, Big Bad Barge guide service pulls up to a popular stretch of the river, fires up his kicker and has everyone cast in the fish holding area. All of his client line begin to quickly swing down river, he didn’t take the time to allow his boats momentum to slow down and didn’t match current speed. Now he has to slam it in reverse, and speed up the boats drifting rate. Since all of the baits drifted downstream that means they are all fishing to far off the beach with a generous amount of slack in their lines. Here is another example Big Bad Barge guide service had his shot at the hole, now it’s Low Holin’ Larry’s turn. He pulls up to the same spot and adjusts his drift just right at the top of the hole and has everyone cast in. Things are looking great, then Low Holin’ Larry begins to slip. The main current is speeding up the closer he gets to the tailout, and the holding water is staying the same speed. Larry’s line is now running parallel to the boat and so is everyone else’s. This means the baits are now dragging that’s bad. Now your thinking, “he said dragging works” and I did but not here it doesn’t. Low Holin’ Larry’s gear now looks like an orange and pink blur of something hauling ass down river like a cop car racing his way through traffic with his lights on. And I know when I’m sitting in traffic that doesn’t look natural. Remember were trying to achieve a natural “free” drift. Ok now it’s your turn you pull up to the drift rods perfectly set up with just enough lead to sink your gear to the bottom, except your buddy with the new pole who didn’t listen to you about line size, put him on the bow with a big chunk of lead (he won’t know the difference anyway).You match the current speed, cast slightly upstream, use the throttle to maintain a nice speed, keep the boat nice and straight……it’s all coming together now isn’t it……boom fish on. Now Lost Puppy Fishing team saw you hook that fish so here they come. They begin they’re drift just right and start fishing. But Captain know it all who went down to Blue Creek once and learned by watching the best takes his 10 degree hulled boat and kicks the bow out into the current a little, and leaves the kicker in gear. Everybody casts out into the holding water and starts to fish. Since his bow is now pointing towards the middle of the river guess where his boat is slowly going. So now instead of the presentation’s naturally drifting through the hole, they are “swimming” away from the bank at a fast pace. Since Lost Puppy Fishing team has a few experienced guys in the boat, the manage to hook a fish because they either fed out slack line or recasted several times to stay in the drift.

There are a lot of things to go wrong and you can still catch fish, but the bottom line is, pay attention and thing will go your way. You can have the best colored yarn, perfect bait, new rod, hot bait oil, and still not be at 100 percent. Free drifting is a method that banks on the visual aspect of steel heading. You are only giving that fish a few seconds to decide whether to bite or not. It’s like a whole row of  delicious cheeseburgers floating by a Fat kid in the playground. That fat Kid isn’t going to take the time to decide if it has American Cheese or Cheddar cheese on the burger he’s just going to eat it. But if that cheeseburger isn’t cooked or it has mold on it he might quickly spit it out. So even if you’re the guy fishing the moldy cheeseburger you might hook that fat kid because he saw your cheeseburger first. But if you like to use moldy cheeseburgers you better be quick on the hook set. You can throw every color in the book at them and still catch fish. But if you use a color that shows up well in the water conditions you have, and present it right you will catch fish. Remember the Fat kid? That Steelhead watching you yarn float by isn’t going to say “that’s cerise not baby pink, I won’t bite it” but you might spook him with a color that isn’t to fish friendly. You know what colors work for Steelhead look at any tackle shop and see what colors have price tags from the 80’s on them, there’s a reason they don’t work. Present a bait in a Natural way if the fish is there, and he’s on the bite he will bite.

So what do you do when there not biting? Try another method! Free drifting is so easy a trained monkey can do it! Get out and catch a fish on a spoon, or a float or a plug or a cheeseburger…whatever! Mix it up and become diversified, Steel heading is rewarding if you constantly challenge yourself with different techniques. But for overcrowded hatchery rivers free drifting is the most effective method. Plus Big Bad Barge guide service will give you dirty looks if you anchor up in the free drifting stretch of the river. Fishing is supposed to be fun!!!! Go have fun and you will catch fish.