What Worked For You This Year.

[fish brain]

Silver Horde Green Glo and Skinny G Bon Chovie did 90 % of the work for me this year. Usually with a No Bananas or Highliner UV flasher. With anything from the Betsy series as back up.

 

[Dave H]

Being counter-culture and a well-known rebel at heart, I started the year off with weak line, dull hooks and a raw rookie on the rod.

Didn't work worth a hoot.




Take care.

 

[Oly1]

Being counter-culture and a well-known rebel at heart, I started the year off with weak line, dull hooks and a raw rookie on the rod.

Didn't work worth a hoot.




Take care.

But now you know what not to do next year. At least at the beginning of the season. Maybe switch to those tactics after a few weeks. But it’s gonna start off hard and fast next year. Wait and see.

Oly

 

[Prfisher]

This is only my second season with a decent boat & time to get out regularly. Did much better last year, but had a late start this season because of delays getting our new outboard installed. By the time we were set to go, we had to work for every fish.
Only once I started using anchovies & herring (5") did our luck improve. I changed gear often on one side & the side with bait consistently out fished everything else I dragged around behind the boat. By August I was using bait on both lines. Still had to work at it, but we suffered way fewer skunk days.
No Bananas & Lemon Lime flashers did the trick more often than not.

 

[michael_reiber]

Guiding out of Ukee this summer and by far the best lures for me which I fished basically every single day was the Herring Aid Skinny G behind a Footloose flasher and a 3' Irish Cream behind a green onion flasher. 602 Tubby tomic plug was pretty good as well

 

[Karlo]

Fishing West Coast Haida Gwaii from May until a couple of weeks ago, we became very 10-pack-anchovy oriented. Using my usual hoochies and hardware, dominated by green-gl0 3.5" Coyotes, 6" 50/50 Clendon-Stewarts, Army Truck Glo hoochies, and an occasional few passes with Tru-Rolls, and Apexes for nostalgia's sake, plus a few other sizes and colors of Coyote spoons, were mildly productive at best, even with good bites on. A 6" spoon called a Warrior, supposedly designed to look like a Glo-GreenGreat Lakes Alewife, was the only piece of rubber or metal that competed with bait successfully on a regular basis, and our biggest fish, a 34-pounder, went for that.

 

[Englishman]

Like Profisher, I only fish Sooke. Unlike Profisher, we only catch a few fish. But of those we did catch, small 4" herring in a regular teaser head worked the best. I fished anchovy (1o pack) one side and the little herring the other and the herring side won by about 3:1 with it accounting for my personal best ever fish at 27lb.
Flashers were Betsy Metallic, Moon Jelly and a weird shiny green/purple one that I don't know the name of and I only have one of and am looking to find another!!
For some reason I cannot make spoons work in the summer in Sooke; they sometimes work in winter, but I usually fish glo hootchies then (although herring will get a go on one side this winter!!)/ However, I am aware lots of guys catch plenty on spoons, around Sooke, including the AP sandlance and herring spoon. They must fish them in some way I am not as I cannot replicate their success. Mind you, since I have plenty of zero cost frozen 4" herring that we scooped in 2017, I am not too bothered about trying to learn to make a spoon work!

 

[scott craven]

I have been a long time fan of the AP spoons as well as coho killer's which worked well this year.
It's been a long time since I fished bait, but admit that 10 pack anchovies worked well in the late season.
I always wondered why they work so well as anchovie is not a common local bait.

 

[Sharphooks]

I bought wholesale quantities of herring three years ago and have way too much of them in my freezer. They look a bit yellowed with dehyradtion showing in the fins and tails but I'm a cheap skate and didn't want to throw them away. Throwing caution to the wind, I brined up 12 dozen of them last June and brought them up to North Coast with me this summer. Whenever the bite slowed and nothing was happening at my "normal" depths, I dropped my beat up mushy herring down to 20 - 30 fathoms and there was Mr. Spring waiting for me.

On multiple occasions I got the spring to the boat, turned it loose, put the same herring back on the hook and got No. 2 spring on the same piece of beat-up mushy bait

I'll chuckle every time I hear people talk about how if you don't have fresh bait and special dyes and secret brining methods for that bait you're spinning your wheels.

I still have two cases of these herring left---I fully intend to use them next spring.

 

[Dogbreath]

I always wondered why they work so well as anchovie is not a common local bait.

Lots all over the Inside now

 

[Stizzla]

Lots all over the Inside now

very cool! The underwater video footage makes me think about trying the all white glow teaser heads.

 

[Islander57]

Beer really worked when the fishing wasn't going so well......back at the camp of course

 

[barkerfam]

Blue needlefish grand slam bucktail behind a dreamweaver spin doctor flasher. fantastic combo for me this year.

 

[RiverBoy]

Blue needlefish grand slam bucktail behind a dreamweaver spin doctor flasher. fantastic combo for me this year.

Seeing as you own GSB? They do look nice; i kinda make my own; but looks more like a Jensen product than your grand slams.

 

[fishbadger]

Skinny G. . . pick-a-color.

fb

 

[scott craven]

Remember when Luhr Jensen "Coyote spoons"
were the go to lure ?

 

[barkerfam]

Seeing as you own GSB? They do look nice; i kinda make my own; but looks more like a Jensen product than your grand slams.

just answering the question honestly! That's what worked for me this year.

 

[RiverBoy]

just answering the question honestly! That's what worked for me this year.

I’ll have to grab a few!