Howdy,
Many moons ago, in the infancy of my river Salmon fishing experience I was fishing cheapskate bar on the Snohomish R. with a couple bud's. We watched hundreds of nice Silvers hop, boil and roll as we casted hardware all morning without any success. It's no wonder fisherman used to think it was a waste of time trying for salmon in freshwater! (can you believe when I started out, Chum were considered impossible to take on legal sport-tackle) Anyway, this one guy I'm fishing with screams fish on, we all excitedly ran over to watch him play his fish. When he landed it, I was shocked to see one of those cheesey indiana/colorado type spinner set-ups that have a rubber worm on a double hook setup. (can't remember what their called, but K-Mart has sold em since I was a kid) A pure fluke is what I dismissed it as, actually I was thinking every dum-ass has his day and went back to casting "real" salmon lures. You've guessed it, five minutes later he had another fish on.

In order to look cool while using this method I just thread half a night crawler on my Aglia. Have you ever seen a Silver whose been in a tannic acid stained stream for a while? Many times they will have some kind of worms/leaches attached to them. My theory is the fish will kill my worm so it can't do the same. Kind of like Salmon/Steelhead striking eggs to insure genetic advantage long after they have quit actively feeding.