I would really like to hear what people think about the subject of snagging (otherwise known as flossing)of migrating salmon.Here in British Columbia on the Fraser river ,we have a sort of legal fishery ,it is effectively a salmon snagging meat fishery.The technique which I'm sure many are familiar with is to drift fish with a 10-25 ft leader and a 2-3 oz. ball weight known as a bouncing betty ,some people use corky's and wool but really a bare hook is all you need.This fishery started 12 years ago and seemed almost legit ,as our leaders were shorter and we truly believed the fish were biting.After some time it became obvious that this was a snagging situation ,longer leaders became standard ,more and more people became involved and snagging became an excepted fishing technique.What we have now is a whole generation of fisherman that know nothing of ethics or ettiqette,in fact they look down upon people who barfish (plunking) thinking they take up too much space.Now we have fishing stores and new guides promoting the fishery and I'm afraid the snowball is out of control.Native fisheries legal and otherwise have increased ,tensions run high all over the river.All we need is one good El Nino event and I think the fish could be in for some rough times.The greed around here is nauseating,people complain that they just bought a new freezer for sockeye season and the numbers are not as good as they used to be,of course the 60 sockeye they killed 4 years ago had nothing to do with it.The worst part is the snagging techniques have carried over to all our rivers ,and all species including steelhead are targeted in this manner .Some people are looking to correct this mistake and we would really like to know how others who have the same target species as we do feel about this ,thanks in advance.
Rod ,Bent Rods ,Guiding.

Keep it in BC It is illegal in Washington

Do a search for the terms snagging and flossing. You'll find plenty of opinions.

Last year I caught lots of fish with a 3-4' leader and not far from the bank. Guys up there were casting 50+. I can't cast a long leader anyways. It always snags on the branches or stuff or someone's dog Not saying they were not flossed. You can do it with any length leader depending on the conditions.

25' leaders?! That is ridiculous. Why not just throw on a huge treble and more weight while your at it?

On the other hand, I have fished sockeye on the Kenai and I'm sure I was probably flossing. The technique was to cast very short- 10-20 ft and draw back the line low in the water as it drifted past. I used those big salmon flies and a fairly short leader. My fish were all mouth hooked, but I'm sure they were flossed since the hook-up was more like the line totally stopped. And we were the more ethical ones, believe it or not. Others were using mulitple hooks and big balls of yarn. It was amazing to see people from all over the world lined up and catching salmon, sometimes foul hooked.

I got to try my limited German out on some tourists who had done that. They finally let the fish go but weren't happy after fighting it for so long.