STALKING THE BIG KINGS - By Steven Hutchins

Understanding a salmon’s behavior, will lead you to the Master Angler fish!

A dozen Chinook salmon milled about on the gravel run directly below me. The overcast conditions on this early October day had eliminated most of the glare on the water and, even without my polarized glasses, I could see the fish clearly.

Four averaged sized males were jockeying for position behind the female but, their efforts were largely ineffective due to the presence of a HUGE male that had clearly established his dominance on the spawning redd.

I’d been stalking the big male for three days and managed to hook him a half dozen times. Each battle ended abruptly with a broken line and mounting frustration. I slipped into the water just above the redd and made a short cast. 

My first cast missed the big male completely. Another, smaller, male was about to smack my fly so I twitched it out of his way and quickly brought my rig back in. After stripping a few more feet of monofilament line off my fly reel, I positioned the fly right in front of the big male who let it pass by without interest. I kept repeating this and the big King was starting to get jittery. A dozen casts later, the monster lashed out at my black woolly bugger and nearly ripped the rod from hand. 

The giant Chinook exited the water several times and each acrobatic cartwheel was met with a resounding splash. The King took off on several blazing runs before I was able to get control of him.  I slowly eased him closer to shore. This was as close as I’d been to landing him. He made one last run before I was able to, finally, maneuver him into the net.  The fish, definitely seeing better days, had several battle scars along his body. I measured him from nose to tail, took a quick photo, and released him back into the clear water of the Big Manistee. The fish was 42.5” inches long and weighed, in excess, of 30 lbs.

He turned out to be the largest Chinook, caught and released, from Michigan waters in the Department of Natural Resources 1998 Master Angler program.  Every year, since 1995 I’ve entered a fish into the Master Angler catch and release program, finishing first in ’98, 2000 and, again, in 2001. Once the salmon have moved onto their spawning beds, I try to seek out the biggest fish and challenge them to a test of wills.  I’ve spent countless hours watching salmon as they finish out the last days of their life. Understanding the behavior of these awesome fish will help you locate the larger and more aggressive members of the species.

The female, or hen, salmon are the center of attention and serve as a magnet for attracting the males who outnumber the hens by a significantly large ratio. Once a hen has dug out a large area of gravel for the spawning bed, the males will immediately gravitate to that location. After a series of battles, the most dominant male will assume his position beside the female. Until the time of actual spawning, the dominant male’s role is to protect the bed and defend his position. Spawning Chinook are extremely territorial. The key to enticing a strike is to trigger the defensive mode of the fish and coax them into striking out in retaliation as your offering approaches the bed.

The first thing to do when targeting the big boys is scout the river you are fishing. Find the gravel areas and you’ll find the fish. Once you’ve located a good gravel run, seeking out the big fish will be relatively easy.

In many of the large northern rivers like The Big Manistee, Muskegon, or Au Sable, it is common to find dozens of Chinook stacked up in one gravel-covered location. For hook up after hook up, this is an angler’s dream but the really big males will be few and far between.  The huge number of fish in one location usually points to the absence of dominant males. As the bigger fish claim their positions, the inferior competition will, in most cases, leave to find better opportunities.  If your targeting the really big kings and nothing but, seek out the smaller pods of fish. That’s where you’ll most likely encounter the kind of fish that are Master Angler material.

The smaller concentrations of fish indicate that a male has established his position. Generally, the largest fish is the most dominant due to his size and strength advantage. He’s always on guard because new arrivals to the river will, no doubt, attempt to unseat him. The males that take up position behind the dominant male are opportunists. They will battle amongst themselves to determine a pecking order of sorts.

Occasionally, they will challenge the dominant fish but, most of the battles revolve around establishing his predecessor. They wait and wait for him to die or to leave the bed completely.  The female is oblivious to all the activity around her. Her only concern is making the bed and laying her eggs before reaching life’s definite conclusion.

Once you’ve located these smaller packs of fish, the large males will stick out like sore thumb. He will also be the aggressor that lashes out at anything that gets close to the bed.  The hen will be at the front of the pack. She, most of the time is recognized by a white tail (the result of digging the bed). The dominant male will be beside her, but slightly behind. The other males will be located behind the bed, jockeying for position.

The Big male will have a one thing on his mind: Defending his turf.

Salmon do not feed once they’ve entered the rivers. The irreversible effects of dying make it impossible for them to digest food therefore, you have to appeal to their extreme territorial instincts.  A fly, spoon, or spinner can be viewed as a threat to a salmon. They’ve no choice but to retaliate with the only weapon available to them: their mouth.  Most of the time they’ll simply pick up your fly or spawn bag and turn their head,  directing the foreign object away from their path. If they’re really offended by your offering then you’ll get a bone jarring strike as they lash out in complete and total anger.

I prefer to drift flies for spawning Chinook, using more of a conventional drift fishing set up, so I’ll focus a little bit on that type of presentation.

Ideally, you’ll want to position yourself just upstream of the redd. By using a clock as an example, the redd should be at 10 or 11:00 from your position (or 1:00 to 2:00 depending on the direction of the current) You don’t want your fly to drift through the salmon to swiftly or it may not trigger a response. You’ll want to position the fly so it swings in front of the salmon’s face. The additional time that your fly spends in front of the salmon’s nose may be enough to trigger a response out of him. Repeated casting, in the same location, is necessary in provoking the salmon’s rage. I use a fly reel loaded with 12lb maxima. By using the fly reel, I can control the amount of line that I strip out and thus, cast into the same location every time.  It’s not fly fishing in the traditional sense (I use different rods and monofilament line) but controlling your casts and hitting the same spot every time is the key to getting the big boys irritated enough to strike!  I rig the same as I would with a standard drift fishing set up with the exception that I use a snap swivel/barrel swivel set up.  Slide the barrel swivel onto your mainline followed by a small bead.  Next, tie a # 10 barrel swivel to the mainline and then your leader from there.  Attach your weight (a ¼ oz walking sinker is what I prefer) to the snap swivel.  The weight will slide up and down your mainline, causing less resistance as it goes through the water…the bead protects the barrel swivel when the weight settles against it.  Periodically, I’ll use two flies. The first fly is usually an attention getting pattern that resembles salmon spawn. Tied a foot below the first fly, I’ll use a large black or gray woolly bugger as the second fly. The second fly is designed to irritate plain and simple.  If I had to choose between one fly though, I wouldn’t be caught on the river without a peach glow-bug. This simple yarn fly has been my deadliest weapon. The length of leader that I use for the two-fly set up is 3 to 4 feet long.  You have to be really careful when using a two-fly rig because there is a tendency to accidentally foul hook  fish with this rig.  I do not use this rig when casting to large groups of fish…I limit its use to the smaller pods where my chances of foul hooking a fish are greatly reduced. If you’re using a two-fly rig, it is important to remain patient.  Do not set the hook on a “bump” or twitch of the line…this results in lots of foul hooked fish.  Stay focused on where the rig is drifting and wait for a good solid tug. In most cases where the water is clear, you can actually see the salmon pick up your fly thus guaranteeing that it’s a fair hooked and ethically taken fish!  Even with all the precaution, foul hooked fish are inevitable (simply because of the number of fish that pile into one location) and these fish must be broken off or released unharmed.

As for leader line, Salmon aren’t shy at this point so you can get away with using an 8 or 10lb leader.  My rods are regular drift rods (Not fly rods per se’) that I have built from 9’ 6”  8 and 9 weight  Sage and G Loomis blanks and can be used for any presentation required.  I always have two rods with me on the river. One has the fly reel for short casts, the other has a Shimano Semtre 1000 open-face loaded with 10lb fireline. This rod is used when longer casts are required. 

Sometimes, the hen is the bigger fish. I try not to target hens because they are the one thing that attracts all the males to a redd. If you disturb her and scare her away, your males will scatter. If you’re fishing at night and you inadvertently land a hen, get her back into the water as soon as possible! In most cases, she’ll immediately return to the bed and your fishing won’t be ruined.

I enjoy catching a lot a fish but, more often than not, I’ll trade quantity for quality and pursue the big boys. Catch and release should be encouraged when tangling with big kings, as they are the ones most likely to spawn. These fish are big for a reason and it can only be determined that their offspring will be just as strong and healthy as the parent. The smaller males are better table fare anyway. Get a picture and release the big males to spawn.

Catching a master angler salmon doesn’t require a great deal of skill. All it takes is a little patience and scouting. Put on the polarized glasses, watch the fish and learn their behavior patterns. The big boys are waiting…

  To learn more about river salmon and steelhead fishing, stop by Steve’s booth at the Woods N Water Outdoor Weekend Sept. 6 –8, 2002. He will be giving one on one demonstrations on various techniques and rigs as well signing copies of his new book, The Fish of a Thousand Casts: Tales of Mischief and Mayhem in the Great Outdoors