Surface fishing for Coho

corrirod · 06-23-2002, 09:44 PM

Anyone out there try surface fishing for Coho? I know they do it in the bays up in Canada. They skip flies behind the boat.

I had several coho attack my herring last year before I even got it under the water so I was thinking about trying some flies this year.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Dan Christopher · 06-23-2002, 10:30 PM

last year at boey 10 for a short 15 min. i tried it .trolled a fly 5 feet behind the wash of the motor.with no luck.then it started getting crowded and i didnt want to **** people of with my fly rod so i went back to the 14 pulls and started catching again.i would have loved to get one on a fly rod. :shocked:

4Salt · 06-24-2002, 08:47 AM

I've surface skipped large streamer flies for coho many times up here in WA at Sekiu and Neah bay. These are the 2 areas where this technique is effective I believe mainly because they are staging areas for very large schools of feeding coho. I've tried it further down in Puget sound without much success. Like Madwizerd said, run the fly just behind the propwash and troll fast enough so that it skips on the surface somewhat similar to marlin or tuna fishing. A large, bright fly that creates a wake works best. If you're out in the ocean and you see birds on a baitball, or are getting coho strikes right near the surface on herring, you might give this technique a try. It is a VERY exciting way to catch coho as they smash the flies very aggressively.

BUGLEMAN · 06-24-2002, 10:31 AM

So 4Salt have you tried that 'NEW' 2' Ronco fishing pole yet?

RIPPLE · 06-24-2002, 10:35 AM

Surface fished cohos with bucktail flies out of Barclay Sound in BC. They were thick and finning on the surface. We could'nt get all four lines out without getting bit. Trolled fast with those whippy BC rods and knuckle buster reels, it was a blast! We had 12 people fishing in three boats and caught a limit of 48 cohos in about 1 hour, absolutely amazing. I would have been happy catching and releasing them all day, but I was'nt callin the shots. Ran out and put 24 halibut in the boats right after that.
Sometimes after springer fishing for 30 hours without any action I wonder if days like that really happened :whazzup:
:grin: RIPPLE :grin:

[ 06-24-2002, 03:13 PM: Message edited by: RIPPLE ]

4Salt · 06-24-2002, 10:51 AM

Bugleman,

What kind of question is that? Of course I have! Ron and I go way back... :grin: :grin:

corrirod · 06-25-2002, 09:48 AM

Thanks for the replies fellas. I'm going to give it a try here in a couple of weeks and I'll let you know what I find out.

Well, I'll let you know if it doesn't work but if it does there might be a slight delay!

Just kidding.

Rodbender · 06-25-2002, 03:20 PM

The best thing you can do to draw a Coho's attention to the Fly is to add one or better two tiny silver spinner blades in front.

#2's are just right, #1's are OK but #3's create too much drag.

I don't like to put the fly too close to the boat, but as mentioned it depends where your bubbles run out, with a 16' skiff and a Yamaha 30 mine run out about 30' back going 2-4mph.

Early morning and late evening have been best for me low light I suppose but I have cheated and run a flasher directly off the downrigger wire just under the surface and put the fly as close as I could works just as well.

[ 06-25-2002, 04:25 PM: Message edited by: Rodbender ]

Thumper · 06-25-2002, 04:35 PM

Near Yakutat, Alaska we fish a saltwater estuary where silvers congregate in shallow water. We toss a crankbait (type doesn't matter much), let it sit and twitch it like you might for big bass. Whammo!!!

Nothing quite like tying into an Alaska silver on a twitched Jitterbug.

smilesforu · 06-25-2002, 06:32 PM

Dry flies for silver salmon....a gurgler. One of the common flies made from white foam used for bass in the kelp lines...

Have fun when they are thick.

pirk fan · 06-25-2002, 08:29 PM

Last year with the bumper crop of hatchery fish, I'd limited out on silvers using conventional trolling techniques. So I went for a limit of bottom fish as well. After catching 6 black rockfish on jigs very near the surface, I decided to drag out the fly rod and try for them with a clouser minnow tied on a 1/0 stainless hook. Caught one rockfish, then the next strike turned out to be a silver, bigger than the two I'd already kept. Hook was barbless, and it was easily released, but that fly has earned a place of honor at work.

This was not high speed trolling, but conventional streamer stripping, about a foot at a time, and the strike was not an arm breaker, I thought at first it was a rockfish.

I'd noticed peculiar boils around the boat that just didn't really look like rockfish, but hadn't given it much thought. I'm sure there were salmon feeding around the same bottom structure as the rockfish. I'm taking the fly rod again this year. It was a blast.

BUGLEMAN · 06-26-2002, 10:00 AM

Hello pirk fan,

Mind saying what port you were out of and where you were catching those surface feeding rockfish?

Please :smile:

swampy · 06-26-2002, 12:18 PM

Bugleman ...I fished out of Newport last sat and found "top feeders" in slicks from the jetties south to Seal Rock and all over the place at Seal Rock ...we went south in around 70-85 feet of water ...a mile or so out ?? They did seem to be feeding on baby crab ...get this , we caught 5- 6 LINGCOD in twenty minutes trolling plug cut in fifty feet of water 2-3 miles south of the jetty ...out 22-28 pulls ...including a double !!! Go getem' !! Swampy

corrirod · 06-26-2002, 11:24 PM

Bugle, I've fished out of Newport when the bottom fish were feeding on the surface. I was told by a local that they are feeding on the baby crabs because they float to the surface. Someone said they saw them feeding on the surface a couple of weeks ago out there. I was looking pretty hard last Saturday on the way out and back from the Rockpile but I didn't see any.

When it happens though, man is it a blast! We caught and released probably 100 fish each in a day. Fortunately I had some spinning gear on the boat to make it fun. We were' sorting thru the tacklebox to see if there was something that WOULDN'T catch them!

Once you spot them just drift in amongst them, turn the motor off, and in less than a minute they'll start surfacing again all around your boat. At that point just get a hook anywhere in the water and you've got a fish on!