I've caught more steelhead floating over them in my sled then I have my drift boat.Go figure!!!.The drift boat is quiet and the sled is noisy????.I love my sled and I love my drift boat.They both have there time and places.If I had to choose between one or the other for some reason. I'd go with my drift boat in a heart beat.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

Your definately right, we end up snagging springers in the gut after rocking up or sledding up a hole. maybe were flossing them though, because well the line is in their mouth but the hook is usually so far buried that we can't see it. Astethically it may not be pleasing, but in certain cases it it works dang good. Its like saying that people floss sockeyes with a flyrod, there for flyfishing is flossing .
best I can figure is that we should not even fish for salmon and steelhead as it may disturb them, and if you truly feel it necessary targeting the 1% that are sucide fish is the only ethical way to do it.

Why has it always got to be some external influence that turns the bite off? I fish all the time where there is no boat influence and the bite practically never lasts all day. Just last week on the river where I fish all the time, I fished from just light until 4 p.m. I had scattered bites until around 8 a.m., the the fish bit like crazy until 10 a.m., then they stopped cold. Changed what I was using two or three times - drifted, spooned, used spinners, covered the entire flats, but couldn't coax a bite. Then, about 2 p.m., it turned on again. No boats, no rocking the hole, just whatever light and temperature changes went on without me being able to discern. This happens often. The bite goes on, then the bite turns off. Why wouldn't this continue to hold true to a large extent if boats and other influences were present. I think whatever is going on in the water has more to do with it than what is going on on or around the water.

I see this happen again and again whether I'm the only person on the bank or one of several on the bank fishing the same water. If some external disturbance happened to coincide with the bite turning off, it would be easy to blame, but it happens all the time, even under ideal conditions.

My answer...it depends. I've caught fish that wouldn't bite until after being stirred up and had fish go off the bite after being stirred up. What sleds do that is known to be bad for fish is erode the banks. Sled goes by full blast the waves erode the banks and often times silt the holes. Anyone seen boat launches gouged out by sleds running up on the trailer? Every time they fire up on plane they are doing some damage to the river. Also, anything that can run in six or less inches of water at full throttle can't be all that great for the fish either. This is why they should be restricted to large rivers only imho. That said I too am a hypocrite and wouldn't turn down a free sled.

While a sled will erode the banks to some extent, nature does more in one high water event than any amount of sleds ever will.

They do, huh? Wow.

Maybe next time, someone should inform Stlhdr1 and I of this.

Is there a "sarcastic" graemlins? I need to insert about 50 of them in here now.....