commercial trawlers

[Deleted User]

Could someone explain how commercial trawlers fish. Do they use bait, downriggers, flashers, flatline?

[Oakie Drifter]

A common mistake is not differentiating between trawlers and trollers.

A trawler uses nets i.e. bottom draggers, mid-water, pelagic, etc.

A troller uses hooks and line. Salmon trollers for example use a number of lines with hooks running off the sides from the stabilizers.

All my commercial knowledge is in trawler fishing, so Im not really too familiar with trolling practices.

Hope that helps or is what you were wanting to know images/icons/smile.gif

[Deleted User]

Thanks Bev. I used the wrong wording in my Chinook near the surf post - trawler instead of troller. The commercial guys have those long 'A-arm' booms hung out to the side with cable, that you refered to as stablizers and I refered to as outriggers. Whatever they are called, the commercial trollers can run several lines off both sides of the boat at once. They use very heavy line which attests to the fact that at least ocean feeding salmon aren't leader shy. They also use very large strong single siwash type hooks on lures such as Coyote Spoons or J-Plugs, instead of taking the time to bait up with herring all the time. When they get a fish on the skipper/fisher uses heavy leather gloves and just handlines the scrappy fish right into the boat quickly and bonks them and lets the lure right back out. This also demonstrates that you don't have to have herring to be effective out there; or they would use it more often than they do. I've never commercial fished; just seen and heard these things, so I am not real sure of the accuracy of this info.

RT

[sinker]

There is hand troller's and power trollers. My uncle fished in SE Alaska as a hand troller for about 35 yrs or so. Hand trolling requires much more work, but the power trolling license is next to impossible to get.
As RT said, they can run multiple lines off of each side of the boat. According to what my uncle told me, they run many spoons down each line. They use a 10lb cannon weight on the end of the line. Imagine yarding that one in by hand with at least one fish fighting away.

[Deleted User]

So in essence, what you're saying is they use many fixed sliders off of one line. Is this correct?

[fishbait]

RT, you are correct in your assumptions. The times I fished out of PC we also used hoochies with a chunk of hearing. It's simple , drop your 30-50 lb cannon ball on steel cable that has crimped sleeves every fathom, the clip on a hook (6 ft 80lb leader)as you drop the ball. End up with 10 -20 hooks eash line. Usually run a spread on each tip,(the tip of each pole) one on eache side and your heaviest ball off the stern. Then troll around. Great fun with 60 - 100 hooks in the water. Usually you just drown the fish dragging them around. Hard to feel a silver, but you can feel the big chinooks. Hyraulics are nice other it's a manual crank to check the gear.