Droppers: The Long & Short of It
With spring chinook season comes a variety of ways to pursue them. From backtrolling plugs and bait, to backbouncing bait, spinners and plugs, to bobber-fishing, drift fishing, boondogging, even trolling, there’s no shortage of approaches when it comes to targeting springers.
While knowing where to start and which method to use can be overwhelming, one detail that often goes overlooked is the sinker setup. Sinkers play an important role in springer fishing success, and the higher in a system the fish travel, the more important sinkers become.
As salmon migrate into tributary systems, rivers become faster flowing with rockier bottom structure. From boulders to bedrock, trees to logjams, anglers have some obstacles to contend with when it comes to pursuing salmon in tributary settings.
One of the keys to overcoming these obstacles and being able to get the terminal gear to where the fish are, is utilizing the right sinker setup. When drift fishing and backbouncing, sinkers and dropper lengths are important, as they’re what control your presentation’s depth and rate of travel.
When hitting fast-moving water like chutes and riffles where salmon travel through early and late in the day, I prefer a super-short dropper with enough lead affixed to keep the presentation in near continual contact with the bottom as it moves downstream. Try keeping the dropper to 6 inches or less, and affix a teardrop or cannonball sinker to it.
For this drifting setup I tie my mainline (17-pound P-Line CXX) to one eye of a three-way swivel, my leader (15-pound CXX) to another eye, and my sinker dropper (10 pound) to the third swivel eye. The purpose of this rigging is to quickly get the gear on the bottom and keep the bait/driftbobber in the strike zone. A short dropper and 24-inch leader, along with plenty of weight, keeps the bait down rather than allowing it to be tossed amid rapids and boils that potentially remove it from the strike zone. When springers travel through shallow, fast water, they’re tight to the bottom, and a short dropper will keep your bait where it needs to be.
In deeper holes, the lower end of riffles and among bedrock ledges, I like letting my bait move about more freely. This is because salmon in these waters are often suspended in water columns, or get moved around in upwelling currents. In these situations, allowing the bait to move about, searching for fish amid natural current flows, can be effective. This can be done through drifting or backbouncing.