Fishforthought asked some questions about Mike's glo scent salmon egg oil and blue wool in an earlier thread.
Sadly, due to a pretty ignorant comment about fishing with wool and the subsequent infantile exchange, Rodney locked the thread and his questions never got answered.
So, let's start with the oil: I have used this product in the past and I have recently reacquainted myself with it. It works well, especially when you use it to enhance single plastic eggs, plastic egg clusters (gooey bobs) and wool, so they will emit the odour natural eggs do. It is especially effective when the water is not very clear. In crystal clear conditions, I find the oil doesn't do much to enhance your presentation. You don't need the scent when visibility is good enough - all you need is to drift your presentation naturally enough near aggressive fish. But as the water clouds up, every little bit helps, as fish will rely on their keen sense of smell as much as on their sight to find and hit your presentation.
Now for the blue wool.
I, too, have been told by some old-timers that blue is a colour that drives coho nuts. Well, in my experience, that is a bunch of codswallop, an urban myth, a load of crapola. I have found that any colour of wool not relatively close to the colour of real salmon eggs drifting downstream is essentially inefficient. While white, pink, peach, orange and red wool in all their shades produce very well, unrelated colours such as green, blue, brown or purple do nothing. Sure enough, you will catch coho regardless of colour if your leader is long enough to line the fish, but don't credit the wool for that.
Using wool is the closest to 'matching the hatch' in gear fishing for salmon in rivers. We must remember that salmon don't actively feed in fresh water, so their bites are essentially out of aggression, trying to destroy competitors' eggs. You figure what species of salmon/trout is in the system, what size their eggs are, how long have those eggs been in the water, would the eggs still be translucent or milky...and based on that you pick your wool colour and size of the tuft. If your tuft is bigger than your pinky finger nail, you are not imitating a trout/salmon egg. Of course, you can always cut it so that it imitates shrimp or krill, but I have had little success this way and it is an entirely different ball game.
To make a long story short: I have yet to catch a coho with blue wool, while I lost count of the coho and other salmon caught with peach or orange wool.
Don't let this deter you though. Maybe getting a coho to bite blue wool is the holy grail of wool fishing. Who knows? Shortfloating wool is certainly a productive method, but it takes a while to master it. The takes can be very subtle and often go undetected if your line tension is not perfect (tight enough to feel even the slightest takes, but not too tight to make the wool (egg imitation) drift unnaturally.
Now if all of the above seems too daunting, stick to cured roe. It's easy, efficient and forgiving, and by far the best method to use to introduce newbies and kids to salmon fishing.
As long as you don't mind the stinky mess on your fingers and tackle.
Tight lines.
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Topic: couple questions (Read 8566 times)