Using a Kayak to Catch Spring Chinook Salmon
By: Bad Ash Outdoors
Catching the famed spring Chinook salmon is nearly at the apex of Pacific Northwest fishing experiences. Some do it from their 26’ jet sleds trolling the Columbia River, and some do it with their toes in the sand and a kayak for the assist on a riverside bank.
Since getting my Old Town BigWater PDL 132 just this year, I wanted to try more creative ways to have a great fishing experience with a kayak! As a younger kid, my family spent time plunking for dinner fish. Plunking is a technique where you cast your fishing lure into the water with a large weight, lean your rod on a stake, and enjoy gas station spoils while you wait for a fish to come to you. At least, that is how my family did it. With my kayak and plunking gear loaded up, I set out to recreate that childhood memory with a bit of my own twist.
Fishing for salmon, well, any fish, is most successful when you put your presentation in the most suitable fish traveling area. When you wait for fish to come to you, as you do in plunking, it is best to place your lures in the middle of the fish highway! To figure out salmon travel lanes, I busted out my Old Town Kayak and Humminbird Helix 7 fishfinder.
After setting my chair, travel BBQ, and cold iced tea on the warm sandy bank, I launched my kayak right off the beach. I pedaled around the bank, watching my Helix 7 closely to determine where the sandbank slopes off to deeper water, and looked for fish marks. At about 22’ of water, the beach sloped into a trough that paralleled the bank. After following the trough for a few hundred feet, I began marking salmon in this trough. Bingo, the fish-highway has been identified.
Heading back to the bank, I set up my gear with a spin-glow, a coon shrimp, a salmon plug wrapped with herring, and heavy weight to hold our lures right in the fish highway. My friends and I took turns taking the kayak out to drop off gear in the marked fish highway location. The place we needed to drop the weight with lures was a couple of hundred feet out, there was no way we were making that cast. Having my BigWater PDL 132 made our plunking day more successful because we could identify where fish were and take our lures out the right spot. In the time it took me to get my gear out, cook a bratwurst, and chase down my Labrador, one of our rods began bouncing.
In this video, you see the joy, surprise, and teamwork of a few friends that took full advantage of a sunny Pacific Northwest day by putting a salmon on the bank.
Enjoy!
-Bad Ash