How to avoid snagging salmon
PUBLICATION: Times Colonist (Victoria)
DATE: 2008.10.02
PAGE: B10
It is the golden time of year when salmon come back to their rivers. And this means river anglers making their annual trek to bring back some big fish. While saltwater fishing was up and down this summer, from the fish currently showing in estuaries, it looks like good large coho and more springs than were expected. With rain later in the week, chum numbers will increase, too.
But here's a tip: there are unethical methods of fishing that result in snagged salmon and you need to avoid them -- they are also illegal. There is always a snag potential in river fishing because there are so many fish sitting in much smaller spaces than in the ocean, but with practice, you can avoid most.
Snagging results because the angler has cast across the wall of flesh and reeled back in. The obvious example is a gear guy who chucks a Buzz Bomb to the other side of the fish and then yanks the rod sideways, reels like mad to collect the slack line then yanks hard again. When the wall of fish flesh is encountered, the next yank puts the hook into a body and a fish is snagged. Any angler doing this should be ticketed.
For those of you who are new to the sport, fly stripping as well as reeling in gear across a wall of flesh will result in snags. The next obvious snag is when using a spoon or spinner in a river. Because one must reel in such lures to give them action, this also results in snagging any fish between the lure and the angler.
The most common method for gear anglers to fish for salmon in freshwater is a yarn fly below some weight. The combo is launched across the fish, the line is reeled and the fish is snagged. This is also true when a dink float is put above the weight and once in the river, the line is reeled in and bingo another snag.
Fly guys are not immune to snagging. For example, the method where a heavy tip is put on the line, the line is chucked up stream and then, when it has sunk downstream to the bottom where the fish lie, the line is yanked once in the fish. And flossing is also a snag -- where a long leader is moved through fish sideways so the leader crosses the mouth and the fly, following, catches on the outside of the fish mouth.
Another method of fly snagging is: put a strike indicator above the heavy tip, a couple of split shot on the leader, and keep the rod tip high, as though nymphing for a trout, and when there is contact, again the rod is yanked.
None of these are methods of fishing; they are all methods of snagging. And this should be put in provincial and federal regulations so that anglers are warned in advance that what they are doing is snagging and then better enforcement of the rules by the authorities.
The proper way to gear fish and not snag with a float set up is: let the float go downstream and only when the float goes under water, having received a bite, does the angler set the hook. And circle hooks prevent even more. The fly guy/gal has an even better chance of avoiding foul hooking; this is because of the intimacy he or she gets with a fly line at the bottom of the river. If you use a 'sleeve' of spandex on the index finger of your rod hand and employ slippery fingers on your stripping hand, you can almost completely avoid snagging.
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Topic: Times Colonist article on snagging (Read 20706 times)