Now that everyone is well aware that summer fishing is happening right now, the next thing is: what to fish, and that means lures.
In the case of big springs, your best bet is anchovy in teaser heads behind a Pal No 3 dodger. In the case of coho/pink/sockeye, your best bet is artificial lures, typically plastic and tin 34-inch behind a flasher. Around here red in flashers is good and the tried and true Hotspot Flasher in red, or red and plaid is your ticket, or the Betsy line that has caught on from Sooke to Nootka Sound.
If you have fished for a long time, you will have a stash of Pal dodgers that sway side to side rather than rotate as most plastic flashers do. This means less action and a medium anchovy set three to four feet behind in a teaser head. Behind a faster revolving flasher, put the bait four to five feet behind in a teaser head 鈥� no longer than six or you will have trouble leading your big catch into your net, which you do head-first.
As for teasers, I typically use some glow version like pearl, Bloody Nose or glow green. The reason for this is it allows you to fish shallow, where light reaches, down to levels where light is scant, without having to change your teaser head 鈥� the alternative being Purple Haze if you are fishing under 50 feet deep. You will have already rigged the teaser up with a wire, treble hook and a single kirbed trailing hook. String the bait on the wire from the gill plate back, inserting one prong of a treble in the lateral line and then add a slight bend closer to the bait鈥檚 tail. The single trails to be the first thing Mr. Spring bites down on. Find the wire-rigging article on my fishing site if you don鈥檛 know how to rig one: catchsalmonbc.com/?page_id=18.
Springs are found close to structure, typically shore where they mosey along on their way home. The best time is the crack of dawn, in the last hour before a flood. There are oodles of structure from Sooke to Sidney, with many prominent points and Islands, for example, for only a few of such spots: Muir Creek, Otter Point, Secretary Island, Creyke Point, the Bedfords, Bentink Island, Enterprise Channel, Turkey Head breakwater, 10 Mile Point, and the Powder Wharf, Coal Island and Saturna in Sidney.
You fish slow, whether cut-plugging or bait towing and take the engine out of gear and put it back in, to make the bait spiral its way in a crest and trough pattern. Bait is good because of its scent in a time when the feeding reflex of a spring is declining. It is not too much to add a commercially-prepared product on top of the bait.
If you mark fish on your sounder but don鈥檛 get a bite, turn a circle and go right on top of it again. Try not to pull against a current as you take longer to get back to the fish, if at all, and you speed the bait spiral up more than a spring will likely take. Fast bait, on the other hand, gets glommed much more quickly by coho, which is a good and bad thing. That鈥檚 for next time.
