One of the best ways to catch giant fish is to fish for salmon when they're staging before the spawn. On this day my old friend Ian and I use standard bass tackle trolling for these giant fish. Fishing for giant Chinook salmon is great this time of year because they can stacked in abundance in small areas. In this video you see some giant salmon caught and you will learn an easy technique to catch them. Giant salmon fishing is a blast and it should be on everyone’s bucket list. If you’ve tried fishing for giant pike or fishing for giant Smallmouth this is very different because the fight is ten fold especially when using the same gear that you use to fish for bass or pike. On this day we hit Port Credit where Credit River meets Lake Ontario. You’ll see the various Crankbaits we use and there’s a lot of crazy surprises in this video. It was a weird and exciting day to say the least.
Best Lures For Chinook Salmon
On this day the best lures for Salmon on Lake Ontario that Ian and I found was the Rapala J-13 in "big fish orange", Cabela's Walleye Runners in green, chartreuse, orange and purples ( basically such just weird and fun punk rock colours, lol) and the Rapala Taildancer Scatter Rap in fire tiger was slightly the better than. the other two baits.
How To Troll For Salmon
This basically a "How To Troll for Salmon Without Downriggers" kinda thing. It's about as easy and simple as it gets.
Ian and I did use planer boards but we were mostly just running flatline crankbaits. We just kept it simple as pie, we used just standard "bass" tackle with no line counters ( so scuffed but effective ). Our best producer was the Taildancer Scatterrap sent out on a half cast in the prop wash. We angled the rod holder so the rod tip was sitting close to or behind the our outboard engine ( BF-150 Honda ). This set up was killing it until the rod got pulled in by a fish..... Learn from our mistake and make sure the rod holder has ring turned so that a fish can't pull it in, lol!
What Is The Best Trolling Speed For Salmon?
Our best speed for trolling was 2.3-2.5mph. Another thing to pay attention to is the direction you're trolling. We noticed on certain angles of the troll that we got more bites. Sometimes its better to pull your lines and set up again for the exact same path. Its especially easy to this when were running our lines flat with no added cannonballs, flashers, flies etc.
We also ran the J-13 out to the side with planer boards or with no planer boards roughly 100 feet back.
Lastly we used the deep diving Walleye Runners on a quarter cast back behind and on a planer board or flat.
On Lake Ontario you can run two lines per person in the open water so before the bite comes on or in harder times we did run four but once the bite got hot we found that it was more effective and easier to manage three lines just straight back with no boards at all.
Best Temperature For Catching Chinook Salmon
On this day the best temperatures for catching these Chinook Salmon were 59 degrees F to 62 degrees F. If we got into warmer water than 62F the bites definitely slowed down. In general though the best temps for us for bites this time of year has been 52-54F but we just didn't have that those temps where we were fishing.
Salmon Fishing Trolling Set Up
Here's our scuffed up but effective Salmon trolling set up we used.
The best line, rods and reel set ups for flatline trolling Salmon are all over the map for this style of flatline trolling for Salmon... It ain't rocket science but there are few things to keep in mind.
On this day we just picked up our standard all round fishing gear. It's hard to say what is ideal. It's constantly changing out there. I can say this though...Salmon can be particular with certain types of vibrations and colours. These vibrations are important so rod blanks can help dial the vibrations that Salmon are preferring. Softer rods help provide Softer vibrations and stiffer rods help produce more sharp and aggressive vibrations. The lines do the same sort of thing. Monofilment helps produce softer vibrations and stiff braid will produce more direct and sharp vibrations.
On this day all three styles were producing and it didn't seem to matter luckily.
Our best set up was a 6'10" ML drop shop rod with 30lb braid with the Taildancer Scatterrap bu it was on slightly better than the J13 and Walleye Runner on 50lb braid with 7'6" MH flipping sticks.
Hopefully the video and info provided helps you out a bit if you ever try fishing this way. Please comment and or message me if you have any further questions.
I love hearing feedback and it only helps me get better as I go forward.... Always forward lol! xoxo TM
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