Sid Fishious

Don't waste your time trying to figure out a new way to use them fish pellets! Many years ago, when I was involved in rearing fish in our net pens, we had the same idea. We tried using the "fish food" as bait, scent, and every other way that it could be used

At the time, we were using "demand" feeders in our net pens and they always had a colored "corky" at the bottom of the feeder that the fish would peck at to release the pellets of food into the water. We even tried using the same colored corky that we used on the demand feeders to see if the fish could remember the color that they used to feed on when they were growing up in the net pens. That too was another futile attempt that failed!

None of the above worked!

Fish seem to go on the bite for many different reasons! In my opinion, it's not because of the time of day that they had feed at the hatchery. Many hatchery fish are feed by demand feeders. That means the fish decides when, and how much it wants to feed.

There not feed that way when they are out to sea, so why would they change when there back in fresh water? Besides, our salmon species start there dieing process when they enter fresh water to spawn, and for the most part are not really great feeders. I believe it's more to do with barometric pressures, light, temp, and water traffic if you're in a boat. Personally I think light conditions plays the biggest part that effects when fish go on a feeding frenzy. It just seems that each river system seems to have its own time when fish like to feed the heaviest.

That would make sense, because a lot of fish pretty much shut off as it gets dark. The excepting to that rule would be steelhead. For some reason, they seem to bite quite well during the night hours, just like all the other species of trout do. Salmon usually seem to back off of feeding at night for the most part. I guess that's one of the differences between salmon and steelhead. Maybe someone else can put a better spin on why fish tend to bite at certain times better then other times.

Cowlitzfisherman