Starting At The Beginning
First things first. As far as I know, we are the only ones in the world who fish by dragging giant lead balls around the ocean. My first introduction to this was through an article by George Heinold in an old mid-60’s issue of Outdoor Life.He was describing a salmon trolling trip he had taken while visiting the west coast.
The salmon trip he took was aboard a boat skippered by none other than our beloved Capt. Jackie Douglas of Wacky Jacky fame! He wrote about our unusual method of towing around heavy ball sinkers that released on the take by means of a sinker release. He wrote about the heavy rods that had the deep bend when under way. He wrote about the unusual way of rigging anchovy baits with long shanked hooks that were skewered through the bait.
Well, folks, after four decades it is still good reading! Everything he wrote about in the article still works; and Jackie is still catching fish … lots of ‘em! Certainly, tackle has progressed since those days of solid fiberglass rods with wooden butts, but the principles are the same. The ideal salmon trolling rod is a study in contrasts. It must be powerful enough to handle the heavy 2.5-3 lb. lead balls, but it has to be flexible enough to cushion the salmon’s powerful bursts. It has to be stiff enough to impart the proper action to dodgers and flashers, but soft enough to keep from ripping the hooks from the salmon’s soft mouth.
Those old time solid glass rods from makers like Montegue, Pucci, and Tuna King were wonderful, if somewhat heavy, rods. Being solid fiberglass, they took quite a beating, too, being able to withstand the punishment any first timer or novice could dish out. Back in those days (50’s-60’s), solid glass rods were all I could afford, but I did dream of one day owning one of those fabulous Harnell 525’s. I still do!
There were also any number of “regulation” trolling rods in the 20 and 30 lb. class designations (not to be confused with IGFA 20 and 30 lb. rods, which are far more powerful) that did the trick but were also beyond the means of this poor ghetto boy.
In a forest of fast taper, light tip, heavy butt blue water type rods, finding an ideal salmon trolling rod can be a daunting task. It takes a little scrounging, but you can still find one of these powerful yet parabolic tapered rods. Most likely, if you are really into salmon trolling, you may find it easier to have one of these rods built for you.
To make the choosing just a little more confusing, I feel that there are two basic salmon trolling rods; a lighter powered rod for trolling plain bait or lures, and another more powerful model for trolling “hardware”, a term often used for those big flashers and dodgers.
I personally don’t think too much of a salmon’s “fight”, so I like using as light an outfit as seems prudent. (Note: If you want to brag about a salmon’s fight, go right ahead; but do me a favor. First hook up and land a like-sized ulua [giant trevally], kahala [island amberjack], yellowtail, or albacore, then if after you get your butt kicked you can still brag about how a salmon fights, well … you get my drift!)
At Hi’s Tackle Box we have a rod built just for us designed around what would be similar to a Calstar 500 blank. It is perfect if all you want to tow around is plain bait, spoons, Emperor minnows, and the like.
The Calstar 500 blank is a good choice (as mentioned) for the lighter “bait rod”, but you can also choose from the T870 blank, a T1525 blank, a Seeker MLB20 blank, or a Seeker regulation trolling 16 or 20 class “long” blank. These blanks all exhibit that long, slow taper with power I look for in a salmon “bait” rod.
If you are in a habit of using flashers and dodgers, then you will need a slightly stiffer rod with a thicker tip for this kind of work. The thicker tips of these rods will provide the necessary resistance to get these big attractors to work properly. Named among these blanks are the Calstar 330 blank (which also makes a dandy wire line trolling rod!), the older Fenwick 7830 blank, or maybe a Seeker MLB30 blank.
If you are to make or have made for you a custom rod, remember that the rod is going to spend a lot of its lifetime in a rod holder … rocking and rolling, rolling and rocking, and the rear grip will be taking a lot of abuse.
In the old days, rods used to have wooden butts for this very reason. Fish with a foam rear grip long enough and it will get cut and torn up. Other possibilities, besides wood, are Aftco aluminum trolling butts (these are heavy, expensive, and will require you to have the butt of the blank trimmed a bit, but woooowhee! They look sooooo nice!), a nice hard plastic butt called a “SlickButt”, and my personal favorite (and the ugliest of the bunch), a short length of aluminum conduit covered with cloth bicycle tape.
When it comes to reel seats you can pick one of those classy looking heavy duty aluminum reel seats from Aftco, Perfection, or ProGear, but I believe them to be overkill. A simple Fuji graphite seat (beware of imposters!) is light, trustworthy, inexpensive, and requires very little care.
I personally think that when it comes to guides, nothing beats roller guides, and I think the Aftco light roller guides are the cat’s meow. These guides are low cost, work well, and require little maintenance. A quick rinse in fresh water and a drop of Reel-X now and then are all they require.
Fans of ring guides can do no better than Fuji silicon carbide guides, but they are reeeeeally pricey. Other than these guides, well made guides of aluminum oxide,titanium dioxide, or high quality chrome plated stainless steel are also good choices, but the light rollers and the silicon carbides are best.
The minimum length for a trolling rod should be about seven feet long, and I would be hard pressed to recommend anything shorter. Why? Because I usually recommend leaders of at least seven feet long, so anything shorter may cause problems when it comes time to land a fish. I have a custom rod that measures a little over eight feet long that is simply killer with flashers, but is a bit hard to transport so I rarely use it, but it does show that rods don’t have to be “only” seven feet long.
Reels…The Heart Of The System
There are so many factors to consider when it comes to the “ideal” trolling reel. The reel should be large enough to hold the requisite amount of line, small enough to be light and comfortable to use, geared properly to handle the big lead trolling balls, and yet have a very smooth drag to help wear down the fish after it is hooked.The “requisite amount of line” is a rather ambiguous term, but basically, it would be about 250 yds. of whatever pound test line you plan to use.
The pound test line you plan to use depends on whether you plan to fish about a party boat, or whether you plan to fish from a private boat.Should you be one who decides to fish off a party boat (hey … big boat, private guide, no cleaning up the boat after a day of fishing … not such a bad deal!) then the line of choice is 25 lb. test nylon monofiliment. This has been the standard sized line for decades when fishing on a party boat. This line is usually coupled with the use of the standard two-and-a-half pound lead sinker.
This is the key …use a sinker 1/10 the weight of the line and the trolling angle will be comparable. More on this later.Twenty five pound test line is certainly a good place to start, and this will provide a balance between a line strong enough to do the job, yet remain light enough to be sporting. Most party boat skippers (well, the Fisherman’s Wharf fleet, anyway) will insist on using the two-and-a-half pound ball, so you may as well use the twenty five pound test line to keep tangles to a minimum.
If you are fishing off your own boat, however, you can use whatever line you feel like using, and this is where the fun begins. Imagine trolling a one-and-a-half pound ball on fifteen pound test line and hooking up on the troll!This is one big advantage to having your own boat, the ability of using something lighter than normal and having the fun of fighting the salmon on the lighter tackle. If you choose not to use the big two-and-a-half pound sinker, then the previous advice about rods may not pertain. A slow to medium action mooching or downrigger rod may suffice!
There has been a lot of confusion, misinformation, and downright weird advice given on reels and no wonder … few people actually take the time to explain the particulars. In the good ol’ days, the simple answer as to what reel may be usable for trolling was a simple one.Pick a reel with a low gear ratio that can hold all the line you need.
The reels that fulfilled these prerequisites most often were Penn reels. Of the many models of Penn conventional reels, the low end was covered by the Penn 60 and 65 Long Beach, and the high end was covered by the Penn 111-2/0 Senator, the Penn 112-3/0 Senator, and the Penn 113-4/0 Senators.
What most people don’t realize is that the three Senator models share the exact same pinions, main gears, and drags, meaning that the biggest model is no stronger than the smallest model.This is why these Penn 111’s are selling so well on eBAY …they are small in size but are more than strong enough and hold more than enough line to do the job.These low gear ratio reels have been doing the job for decades, but have they been effective because of their low gear ratios … or could it be something else?
In the old days, the limiting factor on gear ratios was the round design of the sideplates on the reels. Take, for instance, the Penn 112 and the Penn 500 Jigmaster. These are similar sized reels, but the 112 is much more powerful than the 500 Jigmaster. The lower gear ratio of the 112 is often cited as the main reason for this, but then look at the difference between the Penn 500 and the Penn 505 Jigmaster.The 500 has a gear ratio of 4:1, and the 505 has a ratio of 5:1. The 505 is much less powerful than the 500, mainly because in order to make the higher gear ratio of the 505, Penn had to cut the gear teeth at a greater helical angle. The teeth are also cut shallower to make the requisite number of teeth to make the 5:1 gear ratio also fit inside a round sideplate.
Let us now consider something about gear design. A gear ratio is the relationship between the main gear and the pinion gear.If a main gear has 50 teeth and the pinion gear has 10 teeth, the ratio is 5:1. Now consider if we aren’t limited by the round sideplate design of a reel. If the main gear has 75 teeth and the pinion gear has 15 teeth, the gear ratio is still 5:1; the same is true if the main gear has 100 teeth and the pinion gear has 20 teeth, the ratio is also 5:1!
Why bother with these facts?Because the bigger main gear can be designed to hold bigger drag washers, resulting in a more powerful drag. The bigger pinion gear also makes a more powerful drive as there is a relationship between the size of the pinion gear and the size of the spool as well.
The analogy for this phenomena is this: Consider a car with power assisted steering. With one of those very small chrome chain link steering wheels, it isn’t easy to steer the car. Replace the small chrome chain link steering wheel with a big sixteen inch steering wheel, and everyone from the most petite woman to the burliest truck driver can more easily steer the car. Nothing on the car besides the steering wheel was changed: the tires, wheels, and linkages are the same in both cases.
In this case, the pinion gear is like the steering wheel, the main gear is like the driver, and the spool/line/load is like the rest of the car. The point of all this is to understand that nowadays, a low gear ratio is not the simple matter it used to be, and that modern higher gear ratio reels may actually be powerful enough for salmon trolling. Consider the newer Shimano Trinidads and Tekotas, Daiwa Saltigas, and ProGear Albacore specials. All of these reels have big pinions, drop box designs, and oversized drags, making them all candidates for salmon trolling.
OK … for the very wealthy among you (and you know who you are!) you have the option of picking up a totally fabbed-out two speed reel like the Penn International 16 or perhaps a Shimano Tiagra 12 or 16, and this will answer the whole high gear ratio for speed vs. the low gear ratio for power controversy since you will have BOTH in the same reel!! Goody for you.
A new reel to consider will be the OKUMA Catalina. With a one-piece frame and small size, it will come with an option to add a low gear with a big pinion … coupled with a bargain price (est. to be around $109.99) it may well be the bargain salmon troll reel of the decade.
Whatever reel you choose, make sure you keep it in good repair (carefully wash and wipe down after each trip!) and for goodness sake, DON’T over grease the drags, should you decide to grease the drags at all! The drag will be smooth with all the extra drag, but it may not hold a trolling sinker worth a darn.
Line, The Vital Connection
I am not going to bore you with all kinds of fancy details about line. In the matter of salmon trolling it simply isn’t critical which line you choose. That statement may fly in the face of a lot of manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, et. al., but I will back up that opinion.
MOST modern lines are actually pretty good right now, and it is mostly the differences of one or another characteristic that most line makers will boast about. Salmon trolling simply isn’t variable enough to take advantage of some of the properties line manufacturers like to brag regarding their products.
Take “memory”, for instance. When you have a 2.5 lb. ball stretching out your line, who really cares if the line is coilly in cold weather? How about that nebulous term, “castability”? You simply drop your offering overboard and peel line off your reel, so why worry how well the line casts? And then there’s “high tensile strength” … do you really care how many pounds per square inch your line can withstand? Is a line that has a tensile strength of 115,000 pounds per square inch that much better than a line with a tensile strength of 110,000 pounds per square inch?
Although I grew up in the bay area, I learned a lot of my fishing in southern California, where light line on strong fish is the rule, and people aren’t afraid to change their line after a trip or two. For some reason, the bay area has some of the most “frugal” fishermen I have ever met. It seems that nary a week goes by at Hi’s where we don’t get a few anglers coming in with the line on their reels all dry with a dull finish and caked up with mysterious white powder flying off and asking, “Do you think I need to change my line? It’s only four or five years old!” For crying out loud …give me a break!
Since we are dealing with salmon, you will rarely need to change more than a hundred yards or a hundred and fifty yards at a time. Practically speaking, this represents only $4.00 - $7.00 worth of line, so why skimp?
Ande, Maxima, Yo-Zuri Hybrid, Izorline, Cuda, and P-Line CXX are all reputable lines and all have their adherents. The important thing is to be sure your line is in good shape. With new, fresh line, tie a simple overhand knot some three feet from the end. With a good grip on the line, pull hard as to break the line. Remember how hard it took to break the line. This will be the standard for your line. At some point in the future, test it again, and if it should break notably easier, it is time to change the line.
This is supposed to be an article on “basics”, but the following is an “advanced” technique. Get a five foot long PVC pipe, and cut a one inch “V” notch on both ends. Wrap the line off your reel onto the “V” notches of this pipe. Ten or fifteen wraps will do. Now dip one end of the pipe into a jar of red liquid dye (like Rit) for the time recommended. Pull the line out of the dye and when the line is dry, rewind the line back onto your reel. What you have just done is make a red dye marker on your line at every ten feet. When you need to let line off your reel (as in letting out forty pulls) there will be a marker to make sure you are releasing the same amount of line every time.
Sunset used to make a line with marks every ten feet … Marked Flexon … but it no longer makes this product, hence, making your own marked line. When it comes to knots, there are innumerable publications showing good knots and how to tie them. Pick the ones you can practice with and practice until you can do them in your sleep.
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