Sporadic Movement = More Springers
If you think about what catches salmon, it comes down to smell, sight and sound. Cured eggs are some of the best scent-delivery packages there are when talking springers. Add even more color and movement by topping the eggs with a drift bobber.
Some plugs, lures and spinners offer bling along with sound. Vibrations can be very important in stimulating salmon into biting, and the creators of such gear are well aware of this importance.
In the 1970s plug-fishing reached its height in the salmon fishing world. Ask many seasoned plug-anglers why they liked their favorite plug so much, and they’ll give a simple answer: the action.
It’s this sort of movement that experienced salmon anglers know makes a difference in boosting catch rates. All it takes is a little something extra to catch the attention of a salmon and entice it into biting.
Salmon are voracious predators when living in the ocean and much of their feeding instincts are triggered by the visual acquisition of bait fish, especially crippled baitfish. A crippled baitfish means an easy meal. This is where the erratic movement of plugs, baits and drift bobbers come in, for if they simulate a crippled food source, that’s often all that’s needed to trigger the reactionary strike of a salmon.
Drift bobbers serve the obvious purposes of adding color to a presentation while keeping the bait off the bottom. There are various styles of drift bobbers, with the Lil’ Corky being the most popular. Other drift bobbers twirl and dart about. In addition to adding color and buoyancy, spinning drift bobbers offer rotating action, an appealing quality salmon love.
Good friend and salmon fishing legend, Buzz Ramsey, shared how drift-bobber fanatics used to routinely stop by the Yakima Bait Co. factory, looking for seconds on Corkies. “What they wanted were Corkies with offset holes, a feature that added movement to them,” Ramsey noted. Today, Corkies are made of special foam, and due to precision tooling, rarely will you find a factory-made Lil’ Corky with an off-centered hole.
It’s easy to make an offset hole, yourself. This can be done by gently securing a Corky in pliers and drilling a small hole all the way through, slightly off-center.
On winged drift bobbers, try creating movement by removing one wing so the spinning action becomes more pronounced. This usually works best on the stiffer, mylar-winged spinning drift bobbers.