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Fish the Inside of Bends
When they hit the lower end of a river system, spring chinook are on a mission to get up to their summering grounds well upstream. As quickly as possible. So that means when they are down low, they don’t spend much time holding. Instead, springers pretty much put their heads down and start marching upriver. They will cut the corners of a river and rest very infrequently (until they get up closer to where they are going).
While trolling is the way to go on a massive river like the Columbia, springer anglers on smaller streams tend to anchor up. What you’re trying to do here is figure out a travel lane and then post on up that spot and put some lures in their paths. On rivers like the Klamath and Rogue, for example, the best places to drop the pick are in 3 to 6 feet of water on the inside of river bends. Try to get your gear right in on the seam where the fast water of the main river transitions into the slow stuff on the inside.
When anchored on a spot like that, you’ll usually have to use heavier lead on the outside rods and lighter sinkers on the ones positioned on the soft side.
Fish Low
Unless I’m targeting springers in the upper sections of a river, where they stack up in deep holes, I like to fish as low in a system as I can—as close to the tide as possible. The fish usually come in on the flood in big wads and are at their most concentrated then. As they move upriver, they start to string out and the groups of fish will be fewer and farther between. That’s not to say you can’t catch them but the gaps between pulses are going to be longer.
Fish Tuna
Springers are very scent conscious and you’ll always do better by lathering your gear in some sort of fish “sauce.” As with lure color, there are lots of local variations here but one of the more common themes with springers is tuna. Tuna wraps on plugs, tuna liquid squirted on spinners and tuna mixed into spawn sacs with eggs. On Northern California’s Trinity River, straight tuna balls (wrapped in Moline bags) have been a spring salmon staple for eons. When using tuna from a can, be sure to buy the oil-packed variety!
In addition to tuna, I like anise but again, don’t be afraid to experiment.
Fish Soft
I generally use rods with softer tips when fishing springers than I do for fall fish. Spring chinook have a way of violently mashing lure or bait and I feel that extra “give” in the tip section helps keep fish from pulling off on the strike and initial run. Of course, you’ll still need lots of backbone in the lower two-thirds of your stick so you can tame one of these wild, crazy beasts.
Fish Small
When things get tough for springers, try scaling down the size of your gear. I’ve caught tons of spring salmon on small plugs and spinners intended for steelhead—so many in fact, that I’ve got an entire section in my box set aside for small lures. By downsizing, you can sometimes get fish with lockjaw to bite again.
