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Pre-Spawn
King Salmon Coming Soon
By Russell Gahagan
Like
any time of year pre-spawn king salmon fishing takes specialized tackle
and gear to be successful. It's a great time of year to fish because most
of the fishing is done within a 100 yards of the pier heads so you don't
need a big boat and a lot of gear to be successful. We are going to get
a checklist going here for what you will want to make sure you have to
fish staging King salmon.
*
Silver Horde plugs in both the 5 inch and 4 inch models colors can vary
by day but top producers have been;
Green
Lightning
Blue Lightning
Mother of pearl black ladder
Double Glow
Double Glow black ladder
Vivid Mother of pearl
* Glow in the dark spoons like Michigan Stingers Nitro series
* Crankbaits in khaki colors like wondebread and fire tiger
*Slide divers and planer boards
One
thing to always remember when fishing fall staging king salmon is they
are generally not interested in feeding they bit because it's instinctual.
That is why plugs and crankbaits work so well this time of year. The best
time to fish for the fall kings is a day were the discolored river water
is flowing out into the lake in front of the pier heads. This discolored
river water provides some shade from the sun and generally will keep the
kings biting all day instead of the general early and late bite that happens
during normal shallow water fishing. In the diagrams provided you will
see the average spread we run when fishing the pre spawn kings. Our stud
rods will generally be slide divers with Silver Horde plugs on them. The
advantage of the slide diver in the shallow water is you can use a long
lead by pulling line out before you snap the diver closed. This helps
get your baits away from the boat. Inside divers will generally have spoons
on them and will be great producers when the fish are aggressive. Our
three downrigger spread will have two Silver Horde plugs on the boom downriggers
with 75-100 foot leads behind the ball. The corner rigger will have a
spoon on it with a 30-50 foot lead. The corner rigger will always be the
deepest. If the traffic is light we will run as many as four planer boards
but most of the time only two. The planer boards will be plain twenty
pound mono line with either diving crankbaits or Silver Horde plugs on
them. These rods will be hot on days were the fish are very finicky.
In
the other diagram you will see a drawing of what the water looks like
when the discolored river water is flowing out into the lake. Generally
we will troll north and south in front of the pier heads across the discolored
water. On certain days heading in and out of the harbor mouth through
the discolored water can be very productive but also can cause headaches
if everyone else is doing the opposite. The key usually is figure out
were in the discolored water the fish are hanging and spend as much time
as you can in that area. The best speed this time of year seems to be
slow 2.0-2.5 mph. Start making sure now you have all the equipment you
need to have a successful fall fishing season.
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