Avoiding bad Salmon river fishing practices

[OldTimer]

(09-07-2012 05:09 PM)Seanook Wrote:  Well I have done quite a lot of river fishing over the past few years and I've seen alot of people using tactics that I have come to find out are either aggressively frowned upon or plain taboo.

I plan on hitting the river up this weekend and the float Rod I ordered wasn't in stock (Nice that I wasn't told this until 2 weeks after placing the order) and this leaves me with my spinning combo.

This has me head scratching a bit as to what method I will use to catch with. I probably will go with a bobber, small hook, rowe or shrimp. Is this an acceptable river fishing technique?

If I used a three way swivel and weighted line with a main line consisting of cork, hook and bait, would this be considered a flossing technique?

I had planned to be Fly or float fishing so I really am not well versed in Salmon run river fish etiquite. When I was a young guy I was tought to use setups that are now obviously used for flossing and I do not condone their use. I was young and nobody told me it was bad. Once I found out how frowned upon it was I never used it again and was never really faced with these circumstances as I just fished mainly for Bass and Pike.

Please, anyone with any advice as to what setups to avoid would be greatly appreciated.

Thnx, Seanook.

Hey,

The thing that sets "purists" off is the use of any kind of a heavy sinker set-up which may "bottom bounce" the set-up and trailing line along the bottom..... or pull a large hook dropper downstream.

Your suggested set-up of a light float over a free floating sac, fly, or bait -with minimal ballast (a few light split shot) - which would flow downstream naturally and well above bottom - I think is quite acceptable.

If this technique is illegal - perhaps we should close "main land" salmon season totally....... Save a lot of belly aching....... smile.

Besides.......... who actually eats one of the upstream black boots.

Only my opinion.......... I'm sure I'll get "nay-nays"......... But I rarely, if ever, fish upstream for spawning fish.

Cheers,

OT