In a couple of days a a bunch of the Power BI MVPs are in town for the Microsoft Business Applications Summit.  While here i offered to take some of them (Mike Carlo, Seth Bauer, and Phil Seamark) out Salmon Fishing and a couple of weeks ago Phil asked me how we will be fishing.

While there are a ton of books on the topic of Salmon fishing we will be using one of the four techniques from either a diver or a down rigger

1. Hoochies
2.  Spoons
3. Whole Herring
4. Whole Anchovies

I have listed these in what seems to be most productive/popular...

(to be finished when i get back from the beach!)

Hoochies:

Hoochies are smallish (3.5-4") hollow vinyl skirts that typically will have a plastic body with Tinsel inserted into it and fished with a small piece of Herring.

Unlike the other lures hoochies have no actual action themselves and are typically fished behind a flasher which imparts flashing/darting movements.

....and since you can not fish a flasher behind the Saltydawg/Seastriker divers i use relegates hoochies to downrigger only fishing on my boat

Spoons

While on your table, made from thin stamped brass/steel then chromed and powder coated these guys are really do not look like something a salmon could mistake for a meal but at ~3mph in the water their flashing and darting is amazingly similar to a bait fish and unlike hoochies do not need bait, self-clear weeds and can be fished without a flasher making them amazingly productive and a common "go to" technique.   The picture below shows the typical patterns we fish and a couple of the divers i use.

Whole Herring

Arguably my favorite technique.  While spoons work just as well behind a flasher or "naked" herring tend to work better naked...fished directly behind a diver often quite shallow/close to the boat.

I think the reason for this is the fact the flashers darting motions tends to wash the herring out and beat them up.   Below is are standard rigging techniques, maybe worth noting i do not rig my herring like this nor do fish them as

a