Before participating in river salmon fishing, one has to understand the basic biology of pacific salmon. Pacific salmon enter rivers during fall for one purpose, to spawn and die. This life strategy is incredibly unique, as they only have one chance to produce offspring, before dying off due to exhaustion in the process.

When salmon reach the final stage of their adult life, their stomach cavity is completely filled with either eggs or milt sacs. This results in the shrinking of their stomach, therefore all feeding response turns off once they enter the river. However, saying a salmon does not bite when it reaches freshwater is completely false. They will bite, but for different reasons. Under such competitive situation where thousands of salmon are spawning at the same place, aggression is an expected behaviour. Salmon will fight off smaller trout or coarse fish that attempt to feed on their eggs, they will also destroy other eggs to ensure the survival of their offsprings.

Knowing why they will bite, and how they will bite is very important, in any fishery actually. The objective is not just to embed a hook around the fish's mouth, but to actually entice the fish and catch it by tricking it to feed. Since we know their behaviour, we can develop fishing techniques that mimic the stimuli that trigger them to react to catch these fish successfully.

It is also important to know where a salmon will bite. The morphology of a river is very complex, but when broken down it is very easy to understand. Each river can be divided into sections known as runs and pools. Runs are medium to fast flowing sections while pools are slower, deeper sections. A run can further be divided into three individual sections - head, main body and tail or tailout. The head of a run is usually behind some rapids. The boulders are larger, current is more turbulent. The main body is the mid section of a run, where it looks somewhat uniform, but the velocity of the flow differs at places due to underlying rocks. A tail is the end of a run where water slows down tremendously before entering some rapids.

Fish are not stupid, they will rest whenever they have the opportunity. To conserve their energy as they move upstream, salmon will most likely to lay at tailouts or pockets of slow water along a run. Short floating is used in these waters as it allows resting fish to have the opportunity to spot your offering and take it.

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