I'm sure some of you experience this before. Pod after pod of big bright fish are busting riffles and holding in wierd water, mainly nondescript tailouts and everywhere in between. I have had OK luck tossing spinners or warts. How bout you?

[ 10-19-2001: Message edited by: BK ]

Exciting to watch, hard to catch.

I have found them pretty eager biters in the first available holding water after that...eggs have always worked great....or even just a corkie and yarn.

Hit'em as soon as they move into a holding spot. They are usually super agressive during the sorting out of pecking order period. You have to be quick as this period may last(usually) less than a minute....after that they settle down into nonbiting mode. My theory about black yarn working so well is based on several biological items: 1) what colors do you see in a silvers or kings mouth area?...Black & White; 2) salmon communicate by displaying these colors to each other and the display is territorial. Notice the flashes of black & white we see from the mouthes of an active school of silver that just moved into a hole.
All of these displays involve anger and aggressiveness. Would love to have some black & white vibraxes.

Cove RV Park & Tackle Prostaff(1)
Always FishOn!
Gooose

BK,
It's a ***** isn't it. As said before it's quite exciting to watch these fish blast through, but moving fish are goofy, they've got one thing on there mind (the upper river). Moving chinook are a bit easier than moving silvers in my opinion, although both are tough to catch. My best luck on these fish has been eggs though, as you know there is typically a hole that these fish will hold at a certain point in the river. One reason james and I fish from 10:00am on everyday rather than the morning is they actually will bite better as they seem to settle as the afternoon goes on, unless you're talking tidewater. It's always the worst with the first hard rains. This is certainly a tough question to answer, but let me ask you this. Are they HATCHERY Fish? I'd bet they are! They're the worst.
Keith

Well, Mortac does make a Stilly spoon with a black finish, and you can put a little tape on the inside for some contrast...

Ive had my best luck on moving fish by fishing good holding water water below a shallow riffle or a rapid. The fish seem to stack in those places a little longer. If ou keep at it one will eventually bite.
Silvers seem to be more closed mouth than Chinook. Steelhead on the other hand, will hammer almost anything put in front of them when they are on the move.

So maybe that is what the black okies with the white spots are. I've been trying to figure out why my grandfather had this color of okie. It makes sense, black mouth-black okie. It's an idea.

Matt