Just wanted to share what has been working for me this Spring Chinook season in the upper Columbia.

hey folks this is ken with cold water strong it's monday out here i think it's uh may and uh i came out solo today just to go do some fishing by myself work on a few things out here actually while i'm fishing but i just wanted to go through a little bit um we've been having great success up here in the upper columbia and uh i just wanted to share a little bit i've been getting a lot of inquiries about what am i using what techniques i'm doing and i just wanted to share that a little bit with you guys you know most of the time when i'm up here i'm running short leaders 24 to you know 26 inches but this year you know we had to lengthen it up a little bit just those little tweaks really uh helped out in regards to uh touching more fish the other thing that we did was we actually even started putting a dropper line because of the large amount of debris that's actually in the river if you're if you're actually pinned up on your main line and you're having guys lower those flashers down basically if that hook touches that bottom of this river out here in these flats you're going to pick up a lot of moss leaves sticks and guys you're not fishing so basically we put a 10 to 12 inch dropper line on there and i'll run through it here a little bit of what's my setup so um here you go these have been just killing fish these are all vip spinner blades um i tie them up and um people think i'm kind of crazy but i use a herring hook for the front and i use a deep river for the back and um why so big well you know you lose a lot of fish and so i'm going for our herring hook with a three-ough trailer um there's a couple other things we started doing to have a higher landing ratio which is the other thing is even though the hooks are in there these hooks will come out easily even right after you net it it'll come right out so you got to keep that light tight line on the fish but the biggest thing that really helped us was keeping the rod tip in the water while you're fighting the fish and not coming up and having that that angle of that line of this so basically um at that steep angle coming down these fish when they come over the bonneville they fight like ocean fish they'll come up and they'll roll right in the surface and run and dive and when they're up there rolling like that just like a coho it seems like they'll pop that hook out so i tell the guys to keep that rod tip right in the water if i've actually even grabbed the rod tip and hold it down and reel just kind of like you're bass fishing and trying to get it in there and not have that line created at a steep angle at this angle so these are the spinners has been working really well um what am i running well um traditionally like i said traditionally like i said um i've been using um here's the dropper line right here and so i use my anti-mainline twist so it's a fix system and uh i have a bead with the dual snaps i can switch from from 18s to 24s you know and uh so um there you go dropper line there straight down to my flasher these are the finesse leaders by the way these are finesse leaders so these are 120 pound they're they're a lot better um i'm doing an uphill troll of 1.1 to 1.3 trying to stay right on the bottom so what we're doing is we're releasing tap with the lead two full cranks and leaving it and guys don't leave it forever if you're moving out from 19 to 20 tap and go tap and go tap and go if you're coming in tap and go so we're trying to keep it off the bottom so we don't pick up debris once again um i have my flasher release so right here uh is the cold water strong flasher release system that i'm using to also it helps um the pro trolls is what i've been using up here i do use the short bus up here too from occasion from time to time but most of the time i'm actually just using a lot of pro tools i love these pro tools up here size of leaders um i was like i said going from 24 26 now i'm at 36 a little bit longer and it seems like it's just it's really helped to pick up more fish so that's pretty much my basic setup the other thing too is your rod selections guys if you're running multiple different brand rods in your boat try to synchronize everything and tune everything to your boat i mean this is a raptor rod i have four of these rods off the front and the back and one off the the tail of the transom but they're all rated at 15 to 30 and these i have a smaller not too wide a boat so these are all nine foot from raptor rods and these are all custom rods from jay johnstone out there raptor and these are 9 foot 10 to 30 pounds very light tip but boy the back the backbone on this is so important these fish up here are hard fighting they're very hard fighting so you need that backbone area to control that fish right when you're next to the raw uh boat and and and control that head to get it into the net so that's a real critical part on on rods out here that i think so anyways that's my setup 24 inch bumper leaders 10 inch droppers or 12 360 flashers with 36 inch 36 inch leaders and i tie everything up on do a snaps i mean how easy is that to you know to disconnect when you get a fish in the bow and in the net so and then i'm basically running a lot of people will put different kinds of variations of beads i've always had good luck up here i just like using stack beads stack beads with the red bead in the middle i keep it farther away from the hook guys i think these fish man when they see these these spinners spinning they come up and they i think they really want to chomp that along with the shrimp so when we come to bait now let's talk a little bit about bait i'm not too particular i mean i'm not biased guys everybody makes good shrimp out there especially the commercial made ones um my go-to so far has been the millennials you know and and then we have this um like i say guys i'm not precious to anybody's i think they all make good shrimp we have home valley shrimp we have you know washington coons i've used washington coons out here and caught fish but the biggest thing is just getting it in front of the fish and so basically uh i wanted to share all these things with you i might be missing a couple things but the most important thing that people says oh i was up here i caught seven fish and i only landed one lost six guys keep that rod tip down in that water i mean seriously keep it down the water just pretend you're bass fishing and don't tighten up your drag if he wants to run let him run and uh i know so it's it should be just easy if you're going to be if you're going to be uh having it in your rod holder you should be eat easily just grab that and and adjust basically your your uh if you want to drop the line or pick up the line so i wanted to show you guys a little bit here let me turn this around i came out here at 12 45 it's 2 44. i made one run up and i thought i got a hit i picked it up and it was a ship was gone so i did get a short bite that i'd even see because i'm running two rods and then all of a sudden i made it um here's a tip for you it was it's been cloudy so i've been using a lot of brighter colors and the brighter colors have been successful but when you have this sunny weather like this it's really great to uh change over to copper and copper is is this this is the mexican hat also from vip with the copper and this is what it did it just landed me this beautiful spring chinook i mean look at the quality of this i mean this is a nice hefty you know 13 14 pound fish so um it's on my second run on the downhill run so um another tip i wanted to give you guys if you're going to fish out here if you're going to run downhill and it's too bumpy and it's windy it's always that's why they call this the gorge it's windy pick up your stuff run downstream turn around and troll with the wind back upstream it's going to make your life a lot easier than trying to sit there and beat the hell out of all your gear and yourself going downstream into those waves so go downstream turn around come back up that's one option you have there but if it's smooth troll downstream 2.5 control upstream 1.1 to 1.5 keep it nice and slow keep it right off the bottom these fish are right there you'll have them suspended the other day i saw one on my graph it was suspended i went to my back rod i reeled it up four times brought that thing straight up and wham he hits it so anyways guys that's all i got to say um you know the other thing that i wanted to say is this i've been using these and putting them on my flasher i mean come on we're out here you might as well you know so we have the proven salmon uh from northwest bait and scent um we got the tuna belly i i put those on my flashers if we can eliminate any human scent or any off scent that they don't like i like to mask it up with that and along with the shrimp so then you gotta you know you got a perfect setting for them to come up on there and they're gonna smell that because they got great senses and then they'll take it from you and then um that's about it guys that's all i've been doing uh this season have been great uh phenomenal numbers of fish going over the dam that gives a lot of opportunity there's been a lot of traffic up here but guys grind it out because um work those anywhere from 17 all the way up to 30 feet just depending where it's at you know where the fish are running but most of my fish i've been catching anywhere between 19 and 25 and staying right on the bottom and just running those same lines once in a while i'll go out to the cork line and i'll go out in deep waters 30 35 but i'm suspended 37 on the sides and 30 off the back and we're up a little further not so much on the bottom we're still getting fish on there so i hope it helped you if you're gonna come out here to win river or drano lake it's a totally different fisheries there um here in the upper columbia um so hey guys uh thanks for all your support um finesse leaders um i've been selling a lot of finesse leaders lately in regards to the upper columbia and the the willamette and i'll see you guys out in the river thanks for uh all your support thank you

Channel: Coldwater Strong

Views: 1,004

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Id: OXM4O1a42GE

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022