Finding the salmon

When you are looking for salmon, keep an eye out for all that is going on around you. Look for birds, look at the water color, notice the light conditions and water temperature. All these things contribute to where the fish are possibly going to be. If there isn’t much happening on the surface, chances are that the salmon are going to be down near the bottom.It is also important that you have a good idea about what the salmon usually feed on. Some bait fish stay up near the surface and some are mostly down near the bottom. For example, needlefish and sandlance are often close to bottom, so chances are good that you will catch the salmon in the bottom 20-30 ft.  If you are fishing around structure, this may be a little tricky. It is important that you have a good GPS map of the surrounding features of the bottom and this will save you from hanging up.

Remember that salmon go where the feed is just like you hang around the kitchen when you are hungry. Often when people are at a party, they hang around the food even when they aren’t particularly hungry. Salmon are the same way. Sometime if the salmon aren’t right in the bait, they are hanging around not too far away. It can be worth it to circle the bait a few times just to see if there are some salmon lurking around for the wounded fish that might come their way.