attempted regicide in Portland (i didn't fall out of the yak this time!!)

[Bar002811]

Hey nice catch of salmon do you fish the rocks at Portland breakwall :cheers:

[Bar002811]

Gun smon catch :cheers: :a_goodjob:

[Lightningx]

Hey nice catch of salmon do you fish the rocks at Portland breakwall :cheers:

I know about a month or 2 ago some guys on here did really well with the kingies from the breakwall there

[4liters]

Hey nice catch of salmon do you fish the rocks at Portland breakwall :cheers:

A big school of them was sitting at the end of the inaccessible breakwall and a bunch of us trolled or cast lures at them for a couple of hours. No idea if any were caught from the lee breakwall though.

[purple5ive]

man those fish are good size, must have pulled some drag alrright and again i admire your balls going out in such weather with a paddle.

with the jigheads, what size hook did you have, and how did you rig them?
too small a hook and not enough gape between the plastic will see the fish throw the hook easily.
with the smaller ones hitting the tails, try a smaller plastic next time. those plastics are way too big for salmon.
try a 5 inch size for those sized fish or smaller
cheers

I was pretty happy with the size of the plastic, every pass over the school was getting a solid hookup. It just meant I only caught the big ones that could get their mouth around the whole lure. The guys chucking little 20g slugs were picking up the smaller sambos. It was only some time into the fight that they got off, a couple of times it was when they were jumping.

The 9 inch Zman was rigged with a 5/0 5/8oz jighead and the 200mm squidgy was rigged with a 7/0 1oz jighead. I'm not experienced with plastics but it looked like the hook was sitting high enough from the lure. If I remember tomorrow I'll put up a pic of the lures.

ok, if they always had a solid hookup, then use that again.
nothing you can do about them throwing the hook after a solid hookup, mostly happens when they jump and shake their head as you mentioned.
if they are getting off after a while, it could be possible the hook is getting ripped out of their lips. so lighter drag will help, but then it takes a while to bring them in, good if fishing for fun, but can be tiresome if fishing for food

cheers

[4liters]

I hadn't thought about the hooks pulling but that could be it for some of them. I did have the drag pretty tight because I was in close to the rocks with a decent swell coming through and boats and kayaks going all over the place so I didn't really want to drift for too long while fighting a fish.

If it's just something that happens regardless then I don't really care, I just hadn't had that many jump off the hook before while bait fishing and wondered if there was something wrong with the gear or what I was doing.

[purple5ive]

bait fishng has the weight of the lead to hold the fish down and tire them faster. with a plastic theres bugger all weight as compared to a baited rig, so the fish has the chance to escape a lot easier which is why they jump and shake their head on lures, but cant do it as much with baited rigs.
thats also the reason why the feel like they fight harder on lures.
id bet money on hooks pulling after seeing your above comment. their lips are quite soft and will rip easily
cheers

[4liters]

Cool, thanks.

[Buckle&scream]

Nice salmon mate to bad about the Kings!