" I've come to the conclusion that when it comes to mooching, just about any herring, any hook, any spin, and any presentation works."

In realestate, it's location, location, location!
In fishing, it's presentation, presentation, presentation! Except when it's not...

Presentation #1 We were fishing the Narrows and not sure the dozen herring we had bought would get us through the afternoon. Fishing partner and I had perfectly cut plugs for bait; my six year old son got a herring steak impaled on a single hook. We let our lines out out and were drifting with the current when we noticed a nice sized silver repeatedly leaping behind the boat. One of us had hooked the salmon, and it wasn't either of the fishermen with cut plugs. My son had hooked his first salmon on a herring steak!

Presentation #2 We had been mooching for blackmouth since daylight, we had nothing in the fishbox, we were tired. We decided to put the rods in the rod holders and drag some bait, while the wind pushed us across Commencement Bay. I rigged up a cut plug, checked the action, and let the line out. My fishing partner had just lost the bottom hook of his leader to a dogfish and decided to bury the remaining single hook in the back of a half frozen herring. A crippled herring can be an attractive bait to a salmon; a lifeless herring, not so much. I knew, as he let his line out, he was wasting his time. A third of the way across the bay, my rod went off. My partner reeled his line in, put the rod in the holder, but left his bait in the water. He then proceeded to net my fish, and as we brought an eight pound blackmouth into the boat, we noticed his rod was bouncing in the rod holder. Looking over the side, we were surprised to see a salmon, similar to the one we had in the net, slammin' his motionless, floating-on-its-side herring. A hasty hookset failed and the salmon darted back to the depths. Hard to overstate the importance of "presentation".

Presentation #3 I was trolling along Pt. Fosdick's shoreline and had run out of herring. There was room for one more silver in the fishbox, but the only bait left was a worn out plug cut that had been dropped on the bottom of the boat. It had been soaked in gas and oil, walked on, and baked in the sun. The original cut was mushy and splayed out, the rear hook had ripped through the side. I retreived the herring from the floor, cut a new bevel, stuck the hooks in the soft flesh, and swung the antithesis of a perfect bait over the side. Stripping and counting, I reached three before a strike nearly pulled the rod from my hands. I was planning on counting to ten before going into stealth mode, so the hookset was about seven seconds too late. Never got that last silver; and never again worried about a few missing scales, a bit of blood, or a less than perfect spin on a herring. Just keep your bait in the water...on a solid tie leader!