Catching Salmon: Salmon, Herring Herding, and the Bite

Catching salmon is the goal, and we've got some great tips to get the job done.Our Fish, Why Did You Bite my Bait video narrative mentions the fantastic universe of "game film" the internet offers anglers. This winter, I got hooked on a series of YouTube videos about bait balls. Fascinating stuff to watch!While finding only one or two poorer quality films about salmon feeding on a herring ball, there were many other excellent bait ball films. The good news for the salmon angler is that bait ball behavior is likely universal from one ocean and baitfish kind to another. Therefore, one type's observations apply to other bait and fish feeding types.

Wounded Bait Spin

What started the film obsession was a question about whether or not the wounded baitfish roll had been filmed.If you've been around salmon fishing long enough, you've heard other anglers talk about your herring having the right wounded-bait spin. Or, that king salmon tail-slap their herring to stun them, resulting in the wounded bait spinning.Oddly, after hours of bait ball film viewing, I could not find any tail-slapping feeding behavior. One film showed a marlin biting a sardine's tail off. However, the three-quarter-length sardine tried to swim away upright. But the footage clearly showed a poof of sardine dispersed into the water, reinforcing the importance of scent in your bait setup.

Catching Salmon: The Bait Setup Triangle

One thing the gnawed sardine illustrates is that your bait competes with all the other food and smell choices in the water. Therefore, you need your bait to better mimic natural prey using the bait setup triangle elements of sight, smell, and sound.

More Bait Ball Fishing Tips for Catching Salmon

These films teach other valuable lessons, and we can apply them to our saltwater salmon fishing. They are, in no particular order of importance, as follows:

• Lots of little fish, i.e., bait balls, attract bigger and hungry critters. This means scanning your horizon and looking for birds, seals, sea lions, and whales congregating and active. If you see activity go fish in this area.
• Bigger fish tend to hang out near the bottom of the bait ball. Their attack strategy is circle and dart. Here are a couple of things to do in response to this behavior:
  • Run gear near the ball's bottom, taking advantage of salmon circling and darting into the lower parts for food.
  • The bottom-feeding habit of big fish drives the little fish towards the surface for escape. So move the downrigger or gear up, not down, to stay in the feeding zone.
• Baitfish groups or subgroups move in unison for escape when attacked. The exciting thing is that the fish scales bounce light to the surrounding water as if the paparazzi suddenly spotted a star and flashed their cameras. The flash is the key here. When fishing bait balls, consider using anything with flash – chrome, silver, high flash mylar, etc.

 

Black Vortaks and Flash to Catch Salmon

One setup I will be using this summer when fishing herring balls is a black Vortaks with a high flash mylar skirt pattern. We use mylar material from Purple Taco Fly Supply. This skirt pattern will be Holo Silver Kaleidoscope, Transparent UV Extreme CI, and Black CI 4" mylar. Our Black Fox Vortaks pattern will mimic darting herring and produce the bait ball flash for king and coho bite attraction. We'll fish it behind a chrome flasher and on a short twenty to twenty-four-inch leader.We look forward to reporting on the Black Fox pattern's success in a future blog.Happy Fishing! Don Habeger Founder