Coho by Boat: Survivor Edition

JayB

Steelhead
Imagine that you wake up and find yourself motoring away from at a boat ramp on the Puget Sound, 30 minutes before first light. You've never launched there before, and your mission is to find catch coho on the fly. What visual clues and geographic features do you home in on?

Here's what I've done the past couple of mornings:

1. Look for other boats. Not a perfect indicator - but my default assumption is that most of the guys out fishing know what they're doing. I'll motor over to the general area where I see boats and start looking for other indicators within a few hundred yards of concentrations of boats.

2. Look for signs of coho on the surface as I'm motoring along.

3. Look for concentrations of marine birds on the surface.

4. Look for "nervous water" created by schools of baitfish, or jumping baitfish.

4. Look for points of land that'll create rips, eddies, etc once the tide starts moving.

5. Look for other features downstream of points of land that might further concentrate baitfish or provide opportunities for ambush feeding, like kelp beds or rock outcroppings.

6. Approach "fishy" looking areas that combine one or more indicators 1-5 at about 3 mph with as much line as I can cast trolling behind the boat, kill the motor once I start to see one or more indicators, start stripping in on the slide, and then start casting at whatever looks like the best target.

Example: See point of land with tidal current moving past, note small fish jumping within 50 yards of the beach, drift along the beach casting at appealing looking targets, drift past the point of land focusing on the rip/seam until the feature peters out, then troll another ~0.25 miles over to a concentration of marine birds. Repeat 2-3X.

7. Run this program for 2-3 hours, pull in the fly gear, then deploy a #1 double-deep-six diver + small pro-troll flasher + glow hoochie at 2.5-3 mph on my way out of the fishy looking water for about a mile or so, then pull in all of my gear and motor back to the ramp wondering if there's something else I should be doing......
 

Chucker

Steelhead
1. Look for other boats. Not a perfect indicator - but my default assumption is that most of the guys out fishing know what they're doing. I'll motor over to the general area where I see boats and start looking for other indicators within a few hundred yards of concentrations of boats.

What you mean is “look for where all the idiots are trolling and go someplace else!”

In 20 years of fishing the sound I have come to the conclusion that 95% of the people out there are idiots who don’t know what they are doing and do nothing but go to where the other boats are. Especially for fly fishing, you don't want to be in those areas. Yesterday I was out doing a gear trip. Started where all the idiots were and nearly got run down by one of them. Moved to an area about a mile away from the crowd. No other people to disturb the peace, coho chasing bait on the surface, caught fish.
 

JayB

Steelhead
Useful input. Being much less experienced makes it harder to not at least motor by and see if any of the other indicators are in play.
 

Nick Clayton

Fishing Is Neat
Forum Supporter
. Look for other boats. Not a perfect indicator - but my default assumption is that most of the guys out fishing know what they're doing. I'll motor over to the general area where I see boats and start looking for other indicators within a few hundred yards of concentrations of boats.


Too worn out to reply in depth to your whole post, but I totally agree with Chucker....most folks out there have absolutely no idea what they are doing, why they are fishing a certain way, or why they are fishing a certain area.

There is huge herd mentality in Salmon fishing around here. If you see a bunch of boats in one area you can just about bet on the fact that most of them are there because they saw other boats and joined the party.
 
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