OK this is what I have done in the past before I got heavy into river fishing. We have fished many different patterns and although some may be better from day to day, this is our overall top all-around producing setup:
Hoochie: We have found that the smaller hot red glow head hoochies result in more hookups. Don't use large hoochies I even pull out a few of the tenticles to make the hoochie smaller. I like to use sharp gammies as these fish are easily lost at the boat when they go crazy just before netting. (sockeye tend to come in easy until they are disturbed at the boat...then the acrobatics start) Some experienced fishermen use snubbers (a stretchy section of tubing) between the flasher and the leader...this reduces some of the lost fish but I find it a hassle and tend not to use it much unless I am losing a lot of fish. When hoochies are not producing but there are fish present, it sometimes works to switch to a small pink apex...try it on slow days.
Leader: 24 inches 12 lbs
Flasher: Green or red Hot Spot flasher (we found the red more productive but some times the green seems to work when the red will not). If possible run as much flash as possible. I started getting more hookups when I started running dummy flashers on my down rigger line. I ran my terminal tackle about 12-15 pulls behind my ball. The more flash the better!
Troll pattern: We found that trolling slow worked best. I ran a sea anchor to slow the boat as my kicker was a bit dicey in rough seas. We also found that trolling in a straight line along the tide line best. Occasionally we would slow or speed up and entice a hookup. Run your down riggers between 40 and 100 feet down, I have rarely hooked sockeye below 100 feet, but I am sure that someone else out there will tell you differently....generally I think we tended to get best results from fishing shallow at first light, and progressively going deeper as the day progressed.
Good luck! Hope you get them, when you find a large school the action can be intense. I have had 3 rods pop off the down rigger at the same time!! When this happens all hell breaks loose...I have to coach my buddies to reel in the fish, steer the boat, bring up the balls, net the fish, etc...quite exciting! Hope this helps probably similar to what everyone else uses.
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Topic: Sockeye in the Chuck (Read 12814 times)