The Davy Jones Program
“When currents are strongest, you can only go one way,” Chmura says. “You can’t get a ball downtown plowing into the current. If the wind is coming out of the north for days, it creates a cold current, and salmon rise up on top of The Shelf, or any similar structures, in depths of 60 to 100 feet. That’s the highway, where the average guy spends most of his time and where I like to spend the least possible time. If that current’s coming out of the south, it’s a warm current and more salmon seem to be deep more of the time.
“I’m using 120-pound-test cable. I’d like to go thinner, but I’ll lose too much gear. If I go thicker, I get too much resistance. But resistance is what’s telling me which way to go. Watch the cable angle. Keep it as straight as possible. When it’s pointing out, behind the boat, it’s time to turn around. You’re going with the bulk of the currents when you’re trolling with the least resistance. Those deep currents drag your rig way out there if you’re trolling into them. It takes time, unless you’re out there a lot. And to keep a cannonball down over 400 feet, you’re restricted to about 2 mph. Any faster and the rig rises out of the zone.
“Zebra mussels persist way down there,” Chmura says. “That means you can’t drag bottom. To stay in the zone, I touch bottom three times. Touch bottom once, troll 50 feet or so, drop it to bottom again, repeat the process once more, and the rig stays within 10 feet of bottom. Again, with that much cable out, the angle of the cable tells you which direction you need to be trolling. Once you’ve determined that, just keep going. Don’t troll back to point A. Circle back.
“My presentation consists of using the center rigger to send one cannonball down 450 feet. In addition to special downriggers, you need to use red Off-Shore releases. The black ones release at 180 feet. A second lure can be sent down with the Dendoh-style Tanacom Bull from Daiwa, which holds 3,800 feet of Malin multi-strand wire. Using 2- to 4-pound balls on wire line, looking for a 2:1 ratio, is the only other way to go deep. Using a 4-pound ball, you might be able to get down 500 feet with 1000 feet of wire out, depending on the currents. Last year, I could only put my center rigger down, but that one bait accounted for a dozen or more kings some days at depths between 350 and 440 feet.
“Before going downtown, hook up a glow J-Plug, a glow spoon, or a glow flasher and charge it with a camera flash. The key is simply using whatever was working on top in the morning, with the added attraction of phosphorescence.
