The Outdoor Line Forum

Fished out of Shilshole this afternoon to try and meet up with a Silver. The problem was getting through all of the Kings and Blackmouth! We fished 2 rods and threw back more Hatchery Kings than I have seen in a while. Are these just late fish? BTW we didnt touch a Coho. We fished fast and at all depths. All in all it was an exellent evening. I have heard the saying getting through the Pinks for the Kings but never getting through the Kings for the Coho, go figuire

Wilson wrote:Fished out of Shilshole this afternoon to try and meet up with a Silver. The problem was getting through all of the Kings and Blackmouth! We fished 2 rods and threw back more Hatchery Kings than I have seen in a while. Are these just late fish? BTW we didnt touch a Coho. We fished fast and at all depths. All in all it was an exellent evening. I have heard the saying getting through the Pinks for the Kings but never getting through the Kings for the Coho, go figuire

...and you have too many fifty dollar bills to fit in your wallet and your diamond shoes are too tight....

I would say that part of your experience was the fact that the chinook "fouling" your gear reduced the opportunity for coho to bite.
Another aspect might have been your gear choice. Were you using spoons (Coho killers/Kingfisher Lites) ?

I'm done with spoons until blackmouth season. Every time I put one down these days I get a shaker (juvenile chinook). One of the reasons I use 10 1/2 foot Fetha Styx downrigger rods is the fact that I can see light strikes and shakers much more easily. If you can quickly detect shakers on your gear, you do not drag them for a long period of time and therefore they have a much better survival rate.

Try switching to full size hoochies and Aci-Hi flies fished with a strip of herring. For some reason, I get a higher percentage of coho and less chinook on this offering.

Thanks Tom,

I was using coho killer spoons, we tried fishing AceHi with hootche combo with no luck, I will take your advise and go back to that combo.

I was suprised with the numbers of 12# plus kings around all hatchery and all at speeds in excess of 3.5mph.

I really think that most folks troll too slowly. Part of the problem is that marine speedometers are not very precise or standardized.

Think about it for a minute: You may have a built in speedometer, a "paddle wheel" on the back of your transducer and a GPS/chartplotter all displaying different readings!

Getting the right trolling speed on your individual boat boils down to one thing and it's none of the above...

The only thing that takes all the forces acting on the boat into account is... Drumroll please... Downrigger wire angle!!!

With your cannonball in the water and your boat stopped, the wire angle is zero. As your boat begins to move, the wire experiences water friction and begins to "blow back".

I like an angle of 45 degrees for coho and blackmouth, less for pinks and mature chinook. Once you get the wire angle that looks right, note the GPS speed over ground. If you have a tail current (which you should if you're "going with the flow") you might be surprised at how fast you're actually going!