Unique lures inspired by fishermen’s tales offer intriguing possibilities for catching salmon, but are they true? Here, we’ll try some different wild-side salmon lure ideas, such as the black Fob setup and custom soft-bait skirts, to find out.
The idea of a salmon lure’s wild side emerged while attending Alaskan fishing shows. The tricks and tips received from the attendees were inspiring. Some, however, board on the fanciful. It isn’t always easy to know which is which.
One of the best heard was the black shoelace for king salmon. The two gentlemen who described this setup seemed genuine, but I still wonder about their motive. The words ‘looking for a sucker’ comes to mind.
On the other hand, I had more than one individual look at the black Fob and say that it would make a great king salmon bait.
I intend to find out if hearing something enough times makes it true or not. So, the first wild-side salmon lure is the black Fob with a hook attached to its Duo-lock stainless steel clip. Adding a 30-36” leader to the Fob’s other end and then to an eleven-inch flasher will complete the setup. The black Fob for kings is pictured below.
Another wild-side idea was to go through my salmon gear, pull out all conceivable soft-bait skirt materials, and attach them to a Vortaks rotating bullet head. After all, Spin Skirts – Catch Salmon!
A quick look at the May 2024 issue of Fish Alaska Magazine shows more than a few know that a soft bait setup is effective at pulling in salmon. Great articles such as Soft-Bait Salmon and Soft-Plastic Silvers testify to this salmon gear fact. You can order your copy of their 2024 salmon issue at https://www.fishalaskamagazine.com/product/may-2024/. It is worth the read.
The soft-bait material quickly piled up. For full disclosure, I considered bendable material as soft bait for the Salmon Lure’s Wild Side exercise. Hence, chenille and some Flashabou went in. Here is what my pile looked like.
Assembly materials included hand tools, two-sided tape, and 4” miniature zip ties. Hand tools were scissors and side cutter pliers.
Without too many details, the wild-side salmon lure assembly process was as follows:
- Cut the nose off a plastic squid with scissors so the hole is big enough to fit over the Vortaks’s end flair. Squeeze the squid head between your fingers and push it over the flair until the squid head settles onto the skirt shank. When the squid skirt seemed too loose on the Vortaks skirt shank, a miniature zip tie was used to ensure it was held in place when fished.
- Or, about 5” of Flashabou was pressed onto one side of about a 4” piece of double-sided tape. Once the tape could hold no more Flashabou, the second tape side was peeled off so the skirt assembly could be taped to the Vortaks skirt shank. A miniature zip tie was also used to keep the skirt in place while fishing.
- To keep the wild-side theme, chenille was added to the Flashabou, or, to add a glow feature, squid tentacles were snipped off and placed onto the tape to make the bait more visible during low-light fishing.
- Side cutters were used to reduce the size of the Vortaks flair so that 2.5” smolt-sized squid skirts could be slid onto the skirt shank. Pictured below is a flair reduced in size with side cutters. With extra finger pressure, you can fit the smolt-sized skirt over the reduced-sized Vortaks flair. When salmon feed on smaller prey, you have just the right-sized salmon bait ready to get a bite.
The fruits of your labor are a bunch of custom-made wild side salmon lures fitted to the Vortaks rotating lure head. Spinning soft-bait skirts in various sizes, colors, and materials will give you a bait arsenal for any salmon fishing situation this year.
Happy Fishing!
Don Habeger
Founder