By D.C. Reid

Part One –

   As the name implies, drift fishing is accomplished by sitting in your boat drifting along with the tides. What could be better? Imagine a late summer afternoon, a bottle of low-alcohol beer, the slanting rays of yellow sun and complete and utter silence on a moist, summer-hazy bay. You stare absently into the deep green sea, lift your rod tip slowly then drop it quickly, mastering the one basic fishing skill required for drift fishing. The line curls on the water and the hook sinks home. 100 yards of monofilament scream from the reel. A salmon wave bolts across the surface, and by the time you have recovered from your reverie, the coho leaps in a twisting silver flash high into the air. Lucky you.

   Although the simplest of saltwater fishing techniques, drift fishing requires proper gear. This includes a 7 to 8 foot rod with a semi-stiff tip. The importance of tip stiffness becomes abundantly clear on days when you receive many bites but fail to hook fish. It is absolutely vital that you set hooks in drift fishing, therefore a tip with backbone is necessary.    Match the rod with a graphite, single- action reel. Unlike metal reels of the same price range, these do not rust or become fouled with salt. They are also the most fun, as the run of the fish is controlled largely by the pressure of your palm on the reel. Leave the casting reels, which tend to foul with line backlash during drift fishing, to casting applications. Fill the single-action reel with 300 yards of 25 pound mainline. The need for this pound test becomes clear when your lure snags on the bottom; line of lighter test breaks rather than straightening hooks and pulling the lure from its watery grave.

   For the business end, the market niche for drift fishing lures is wider than any other lure type. The reason is that drift fishing lures are inevitably fashioned from a lead blank that has been painted or doctored up in some way, hence, any competent fisher can easily and cheaply make his or her own lure. Once the lure starts catching fish, the attraction of putting it on the market often proves irresistible. Try it yourself; catching salmon on a lure you made yourself can be highly satisfying. Take some plaster of Paris and make a mold, melt some lead into it and presto, you have a lure. It’s that simple.

   My tackle box reserved for drift fishing bulges with lures: Buzz Bombs, Sting sildas, Deadly Dicks, Spinnows, Mac Deeps, Pirks, Pirkens, Rip Tide Strikers, halibut rigs with their chromed metal weights and huge, floppy, rubber hootchies, Reef Raiders, old-fashioned banana jigs, Zingers, Phishes, King of Diamonds, Magic Lures, Cod Kings, etc., etc. At minimum, consider purchasing the black and green 40 gram Sting silda and a few Buzz Bombs: white, white and grey, white and pink, and white and green. Buy the others on local advice.

   Virtually all drift fishing lures flutter down on their sides. The theory of their action isn’t hard to understand. Baitfish on which salmon feed produce a characteristic fluttering motion when injured - a fluttering spiral as they try in vain to right themselves. This motion produces vibrations in the water that travel off in all directions. Acutely sensitive to motion, predators such as salmon, lingcod and halibut, instinctively respond to such vibration before visually contacting the injured animal. They flash toward it, and in the last instant, sight cues them to the exact location of the much-easier-caught-than-a-healthy-animal meal.

   Some lures come ready to be fished, others do not. The Sting silda, for instance, needs to be bent. Press down on one end of the lure with both thumbs, then, on the same side, press down on the other end of the lure. This produces the classic, slight bend known as a "C" curve. It is most important to test lure action in the water at the side of the boat. Drop the rod tip and if the lure gently flutters and shimmies here and there, giving off nice sparkles of light as it drops perfectly and delectably on its side, you may well have a killer. If you know someone skilled at drift fishing, have them bend your lures. Get them to explain what they look for in action.

   Some lure action possibilities are not preferred. An over bent lure will fall lifelessly, requiring flattening and rebending. A lure, other than a Spinnow, should not fall in a tight spiral. If it does, be prepared to catch zero fish until you change the bend. A spiral indicates that one end of the lure is bent too much. It can also indicate that your mainline testis too heavy, resulting in drag. If lure fall time decreases with depth, line drag is also the culprit and mainline test should be reduced. Line wrap on the rod tip also indicates a spiralling lure. This problem can be solved by adding a small simple swivel and six feet of 20 pound leader to the lure.

   Tie drift fishing lures with a palomar knot: simple, effective, strong. Lures that slide up and down the line such as Buzz Bombs should be retied each time out. A day of thunk-thunking onto the hook fatally weakens many knots. Strip off 6 feet of line and retie.

Part Two -

   Now that you’ve picked up the basic drift fishing gear - a 7 - 8foot rod with semi-stiff tip, a single action reel with 300 yards of 25pound test and an array of sexy lures - you want to get out there and fish. The question that leaps to your mind is: where? You ask this question because ou have read the trolling sections of this web-page and realize the ocean is a huge place with small sprinklings of salmon in vast amounts of empty space.

   So where and when does drift fishing hit its peak? Let’s answer the second question first. Drift fishing proves most solid in summer – July to October - when as many as five species may be present on any given day, and possibly vying for the same, limited food supply. As lures represent wounded baitfish, your targets are the carnivores of the salmonid family: chinook, coho, and pink. (Sockeye and chum will bite a lure out of hormonalirritation, but, as plankton feeders, not very often for other reasons.)Winter drift fishing usually proves successful in locations where fish can be bunched by land contours.

   Two locations suggest themselves: where the bait is and where the fish are. Bait can usually be found in tidelines from 1 to 3 miles offshore or associated with some land structure. Bait gets pushed into tidelines and salmon, usually coho and pink, follow. Normally summer fishing of this type occurs within 50 feet of the surface. The key is to find herring balls, those masses of silver flesh attacked from below by salmon and from above by squawking seagulls. Drift fishers are well advised to follow herring ball activity around the fishing ground, quietly approaching the ball and fishing to the side or underneath the school. Keep an eye open for herring scales in the water. Quite often, salmon will lie out of sight 30 to 40feet beneath them for some time.    Alternatively, find bait schools associated with land structures. Find areas of restricted tidal flow, entrances or exits to small passes, backed dies behind islands, spires of rock that rise from deeper waters, shoreline nooks and crannies at the crack of dawn when chinook and bait can be within a stone’s throw from land, mud-covered bottoms where needlefish feed, and bait shoals on depth sounders. Areas that combine rugged underwater terrain with street lights can be deadly, even in the middle of the night, as herring spritz from the water as though shot from cannons, escaping the wily salmon.

   Drift fishing technique is so deceptively simple that it is, well, simple; however, incorrectly performed, nothing will be achieved. Strip off line from the reel in two feet "pulls". The purpose is to know exactly how deep the lure is so that after receiving a strike you can immediately zero in on the fishy zone. Drift fishers methodically cover the depths between20 and 120 feet, stopping every ten feet to fish for a few minutes. Due to their facial features, salmon see forward and slightly up and are long conditioned to feeding on bait from underneath. Accordingly it’s best to fish a bit shallower than deeper.

   The slow up fast down rod technique has already been suggested. Bear in mind that the lure fishes only on the downward flutter, ie., during the rest of cycle the lure might as well be a tennis shoe for all the food synapses it fires in a salmon’s fingertip-sized brain. Do not, however, yank the rod up fast. This can pull the lure completely out of view of the salmon or make it move so rapidly that it is pulled repeatedly out of the way of a charging salmon. The correct pattern is: slow up, fast down.

   Add some variation to your pattern: a six foot pull followed by a few flutters, then a two or three two foot pull, and so on. Make it appear that the lure is in trouble, but trying to right itself and get away. Most predators respond swiftly to food that appears to be making a getaway. Make sure to fish your lure back to the boat, stopping every ten feet or so. Many fish follow lures up and strike within view of the boat. Be sure to cover all the water around the boat, as well as fishing lures up or down underwater shelves. Refer to the diagram for fishing patterns.



   Once a fish has bitten, setting hooks is crucial in drift fishing. Trolled lures tend to set themselves because the fish turns away from an essentially fixed lure. During drift fishing, lures usually receive bites while the lure is falling and there is slack between it and the rod. The salmon can pick the lure up and carry it without coming in contact with the hook. The bite can be so dramatic that it takes you by surprise or so soft that you don’t know it has happened. My favorite drift fishing bite is when the lure does not reach the bottom of its fall and a curl of line floats on the surface. Ah the glee, the adrenaline rush!

   Regardless of bite variety, get in the habit of pulling up hard when any bump, nudge or tick is felt. Hold the forefinger of your rod hand around the line at all times to provide added drag. If you are fortunate enough to have the time, point the rod tip at the water and reel in like crazy. In the same instant, pull that rod up as high as you can. Salmon have bony jaws and it takes good strength to secure the hook in the scant flesh of the mouth or throat. It is easy to understand why hooks should be sharpened each time out. Drape each point on your thumb nail. Only hooks that dig in and hold are sharp enough.

   Sometimes, no matter how skilled the fisher, hooks just refuse to set. In these circumstances, alter your technique: re-sharpen all hooks; use a stiffer-tipped rod or restring the mainline through the second rod guide; lower the rod tip only a bit faster than the lure drops; mount hooks on both ends of the lure; or, move from a treble to a single hook. Sooner or later the gods of fishing fish will be moved by your efforts.Then the fight will be on. Imagine yourself in the late afternoon sun, utterquiet and then the reel screeching. Even the water will stop to listen.Best of luck.