Trolling for Salmon in British Columbia

How a Salmon Troller Works

• The Electronic Edge.
• Working the Tides.
• The Fishing Gear.
• How the Gear Works.
• Processing the Salmon.
• Back to Commercial Fishing Page.

The Electronic Edge...

Trolling for salmon has changed very much since I first started 30 years ago. The first boat that I fished on had virtually no electronic equipment compared with today. Basically all we had back then was a flasher sounder and a couple of marine telephones that had maybe a 20 mile range if we were lucky. The flasher sounder had a dial face with the depths marked off in increments of 10 fathoms (six feet to a fathom). The transducer sent a signal to the bottom and at whatever depth the signal struck fish or bottom the flasher on the sounder dial would flash at that depth. It was a very unreliable device and most fishermen relied on landmarks to tell when they were close to the reefs but landmarks only worked when it wasn't foggy which isn't too often on the west coast.

The modern troller relies very heavily on their electronics and has a multitude of different systems and backups. They have autopilots with remote controls from several stations on the boat so the skipper can adjust course from wherever he happens to be on the vessel. These autopilots are connected to various types of navigation systems and onboard computers can be programmed to chart fishing course changes for the whole day if the skipper chooses. These computers store waypoints or positions for all his hotspots and for safe harbours so that at a push of a button he knows how far and how long to any point on the globe. Global positioning systems are accurate to within a couple of feet so a good skipper can drag his gear along side of a reef without ever snagging a hook. Fish don't have a chance.

Video fish finders and sonars are now so sophisticated that a fisherman can tell what species of fish every blip on his screen is and what direction and how fast they are travelling.

Communications with his fishing buddies is also very important to his success and most fisherman have many types of radios and phones complete with secret crystals and scramblers to prevent others from learning the hot scoop. They also have high tech scanners and descramblers and maintain a constant vigilance on the air waves hoping to catch the tip that will make their season. Fishermen are very adept at listening to and deciphering information coming from many different sources at once.

Modern day radars are able to reach out to distances of 50 miles and can track many different targets and store the information. A skipper can mark his targets, usually highliners he wants to keep his eye on and never lose sight of them. It is useful information when several boats of one group all of a sudden pick up their gear and head away for a hot spot. It used to be that you could slowly sneak off and when you were out of sight of the main fleet you could pick up your gear and start running for your buddy's hotspot.

With modern electronics a skipper has to be very sneaky to keep his fish to himself...

The very most important electrical component on a salmon troller is the vessel's bonding system. Studies have shown that fish are attracted to and repulsed by electrical currents and fields surrounding fishing boats.

It is very important for all metals on a boat to be bonded or joined by heavy electrical wire and then connected to underwater zinc bars attached to the hull of the vessel. As different metals are immersed in water they create small electrical currents moving between them. When bonded these currents are neutralized and a positive electrical field is created around the boat. This field can be measured relative to the ships ground and should be in the area of .4 to.5 of a volt. After his vessel is properly bonded then the skipper can attach a device known as a "black box" to his steel trolling wires. This box is able to send a metered amount of electrical current down through the trolling wire. With experience a skipper can adjust the voltage to attract different species and sizes of fish.

The voltages are very small and vary between .15 and .3 of a volt relative to your vessel's electrical field. The bigger the school of fish and the smaller the fish the higher they like the voltage.

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Working the Tides...

To be a good troller takes alot more than just dropping your hooks in the water. Lots of people think that the ocean is full of lots of hungry salmon just waiting to bite their lures when they are dropped overboard. The truth is that the ocean is full of tasty little feed fish that the salmon would rather eat. The idea is to present a lure that looks appealing and to place it in a position where a salmon can find it. You can't neccesarily find fish anywhere you look. They will hang around feed balls or in certain temperatures. Usually a good place to look is around reefs or dropoffs.

The feed usally hangs around places where they will have good protection from predators and rocks and holes offer this type of protection. Usually areas that have a strong tidal flow are also good places to find salmon and the reason for this is that bait fish are often swept along with the current making them an easy catch for the predator. I usually try to troll along with the current when the tide is running at its strongest and carefully watch the tide tables to try to use the currents to my advantage. I feel that the more ground you cover the better chance you have of running into more fish and the more fish you go over the more you will catch.

Just before the tide reverses, which is known as slack water the feed fish come off the bottom to do their feeding when they don't have to fight the currents as much. This is when there is a real feeding frenzy among all fish. This is the best time to catch fish and a troller will get most of his days catch during the slack water periods which last about an hour each. In the summer when the tides are right you can sometimes get 3 slack tides a day but usually get only two. On the 3 slack water days is when you usually get your best production.

It is very important to know when these slacks will occur so that you can be at your hotspot when it happens. There is nothing worse that being a couple of miles from your spot when the slack occurs because you will never get back in time when you are only trolling at about 2 knots per hour. I carefully plan my tacks to be on top of my hotspot at precisely slack water and then will do real short tacks to stay in position for the duration.

When the tide again picks up in velocity that is when I will travel with the current and do any exploring for new areas. Because the tides are affected by the moons gravity you will find that the tides are biggest around the full moon and a new moon. When the tides are at their biggest the fish have to spend most of their energy fighting the current so they will spend less time feeding and so you will spend less time catching. The best time for fishing is when the moon is half full and tides are at a minimum.

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The Fishing Gear...

A well equipped troller has many thousands of dollars worth of fishing gear onboard, lots of which may never get used. Every time a buddy loads up on fish with a particular type of gear a fisherman usally heads to the gear store and buys out that particular type of gear so he will be ready the next time the fish will only take that lure. You also want to have lots of spare gear on hand for that time when you get a dream trip where only huge fighting fish will bite and they keep breaking your leaders. You don't want to run out of your favorite spoons when the bite is on.

A troller can fish for all five species of salmon and most of them require specialized gear. A troller can set up his gear to be very selective when he wants to be or can set it up in a way that would catch a variety of species. Years ago a trollers main catch was coho and chinook which generally will take the same lures especially later in the summer when the coho are bigger and looking for bigger feed. Early in the season when the coho are in large feeding schools a fisherman likes to have lots of small egg shaped wobbler spoons preferably in pink or red colors and any metal color spoon such as brass and copper.

As the summer progresses they start to like bigger lures such as plugs or larger spoons. Flashers with hootchie tails are also good producers but the fisherman has to adjust his tail length so they will work with different spoons as each spoon requires different trolling speeds. Speed is the most critical aspect of getting your gear to work. I usually watch it trailing in the water behind the boat to try and get the right speed. This won't always work though as the speed of the tidal current has a great effect on the lures and current speed is relative to the depth. Currents are stronger near the surface and weaker nearer the bottom. Of all the species of salmon coho like the fastest speed and I have found that by trolling around 3 knots I will have my best production.

Coho used to be the trollers bread and butter but the large chinook or spring salmon, which were referred to as 'smilies' because of the big grin they produced on the fisherman's face when caught, were the most desirable mostly because of the adrenalin rushes they produced. I always preferred fishing smilies over the coho even if I made less money. I always had my best luck with springs by using flashers and hootchies although I always towed spoons or plugs along with them. I would never use spoons and plugs together though as they required different speeds but by adjusting the tail length on my flashers you could get one or the other to fish well with the flashers. Never would I not use flashers. They were always present in the most desirable locations on my lines.

There are hundreds of different color patterns for the hootchies, spoons and plugs and every fisherman has his own secret patterns that he guards with his life. Many hours are spent on the dock trying to wrestle another fishermans secret numbers out of him either by trade or bribe or a quick peek in his gear locker when he isn't looking. Many fisherman would carefully hide their gear when they came in the harbour and place a dummy set in the stern to confuse the opposition.

I have tried many different jobs over the years and have never seen anything that comes even close to the competetivness in the fishing fleets. Trollers even refer to their daily catches as their score and I have seen fishermen become physically sick when hearing of anothers good catch. As coho and spring salmon are also the preferred catch of sports fishermen and they have stronger lobby groups the commercial fisherman has steadily become more and more restricted from fishing for these species and has had to rely more on sockeye and pink salmon. These fish require lots less finesse when it comes to the gear used to catch them but a fisherman requires a better production line type of system to produce the large numbers of fish he needs in order to make a living. The gear used for catching sockeye and pinks is just large numbers of flashers and pink hootchies.

It seems that a green flasher is also the best producer for these fish and a highliner will tow as many as 200 flashers behind his boat at one time. When the fish are really biting these flashers will have a fish on them all day long and it would be hard to find a empty hook.

These fish are very fussy when it comes to the electrical field around your boat (see first chapter) and I have seen where one fisherman will be pulling fish on every hook and another fisherman on a boat right beside him will just be pulling his hair. When you can get a school of fish liking your boat and get them following you, you have it made.

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How the Gear Works...

A Canadian troller is allowed to fish with six steel trolling lines attached to hydraulic powered fishing reels or gurdies as they are called. These gurdies are made of brass and can hold about 150 fathoms of the steel wire which is 1/16 inch or 5/64 inch in diameter. Most fishermen use the lighter wire. The wire is marked with two brass beads every 1 to 3 fathoms the whole length of the wire. I personally liked my wire marked at 1 1/2 fathoms. The end of this wire was attached to a lead weight called a cannon ball. The weight of these cannon balls varied depending on the depth fished and were generally between 25 and 70 pounds.

On either side of the boat about midships was a trolling pole that was lowered to about a 45 deg. angle when fishing. These poles are roughly the same length as the boat. On the ends of these poles was a system of springs and bells called triggers. Each of the these triggers had a line called a tag line attached to it, one for each gurdie. The wire line went from the gurdie up through a block attached to a davit on the side of the boat and then through a fairlead attached to the end of the tag line. When the cannon ball was lowered into the water and reached the required depth a stop ring was attached in between a set of the brass beads on the wire line with a piece of light twine. This stop ring was then prevented from travelling through the fairlead and the weight of the lead cannon ball caused the line to swing out and hang off the end of trolling pole and the trigger.

By using heavier leads on your front lines and a float called a pig on your back lines you are able to spread your gear apart so that it won't tangle. When the gear is set each line is set individually and at each set of brass beads a lure is placed. The lure is set up on a piece of nylon line called perlon and its length is determined by the distance between the brass beads on the steel wire. On the end of the perlon that is attached to the steel line is a device called a trolling snap which is snapped on between the brass beads so that it is prevented from sliding up or down the wire line. The lures are snapped on one after another until the desired depth is attained when the stop ring is attached and the line is then swung out to hang off the trigger. Each line is set in turn and then the fisherman waits for the bites which are announced by the ringing of the bell on the trigger system.

Each individual gurdie has its own clutch and brake system so they can work independently of the others. The lines are set up in such a way that they can be swung back in while clearing the other lines. This way one line can be brought in at a time while the others remain fishing. An efficient operator would be able to go through all the gear removing fish and seaweed and any other material that is caught in about half an hour.

A good fisherman will constantly keep his gear moving up and down the whole day. This simulates a school of feed which is constantly moving up and down and back and forth not swimming in a straight line. This also allows you to remove unwanted fish before they would drown and keeps your gear clean and ready for the money fish.

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Processing the Salmon...

When the fish are brought aboard they are immediatly killed and allowed to bleed out. Within half an hour of being caught they are dressed which means having their gills and entrails removed and the kidney is then scraped out from along the backbone with a spoon attached to a hose. If the fish are to be frozen at sea they also sometimes remove the head. They are then washed thoroughly removing all traces of blood and sea lice. The fish is then allowed to lay in a covered box with cold sea water sprayed over them to prevent them from drying out. After they have sat for approximately half an hour they are then washed a second time to remove any blood that has seeped into the stomach cavity.

If the troller is an ice packer then the fish are dropped into the hold onto fresh ice where they will be chilled for approx. 1 hour. After they are chilled then they are stacked into pens side by side all facing the same way. A scoop of ice is placed in the body cavity and in the head. Ice is also placed all around the edges against the walls of the pens and a layer of ice is placed on top of each layer of fish. A good size troller can carry anywhere from 10 to 20,000 lbs. of iced salmon. The fish can be kept in a well insulated hold for 8 to 10 days before they have to be delivered to a fish buyer.

Some trollers have freezer systems which quick freeze the fish and then store them at -40 Farenheit. The advantage of freezer trollers is that they don't have to deliver their fish every 8 days or so and can stay out till they are full.

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