Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing…, in the Depths!

This Lake Ontario salmon hit one of my favorite deep water spoons, the NK28 Spook.

If you fish the east end of Lake Ontario where prevailing westerly summer winds push cold water deep, you know all about fishing the depths for trout and salmon. 

Fishing deep water has been a way of life out of Oswego lately, with temps in 200 feet of water, 60 degrees at 100′ , 50 degrees at 160′, and 43 degrees at well over 200 feet, give or take 20 to 50 feet depending on which day we’re talking about in the last seven days or so.  Throw in an increase in the number of water fleas we’re seeing lately, plus some serious subsurface currents, and this deep water  fishing can be tough. 

Nobody wants to fish a standard size Dipsy on the #1 setting with 400 feet of wire to just barely get to temp 120 feet down.  Riggers take that much  longer to set and retrieve, if they’re down  over 200′, and major snarls using multiple riggers are common.  With copper, better get out your 500′ and 600′ sections, and keep some spare spools on the boat because tangles with Dipsys are not uncommon. 

These challenging conditions discourage lots of anglers, but there are some simple way to cope with them and enjoy some great fishing.

My approach is to go back to basics and keep it as simple as possible.   Here are a few things that help keep me in fish when they’re deep, the fleas are nasty, and the currents severe;

1. Use only two riggers, and use at least a 12 lb. rigger weight that is tunable to make the weights swim away from each other slightly, avoiding tangles.

2.  Use a good speed/temp probe to monitor temp and maintain optimum trolling speed.

3. Use stout releases like the Capt. Jax to handle the extra pull on the line caused by the added resistance caused by all the line in the water, plus fleas.

4.  Use mag Dipsys with 7′ roller rods.  These Dipsys will get you down to 120 feet or more with as little as 250 feet of wire, depending on currents.

5.  Fish copper off boards, 400, 500, and 600′ sections.  Even though the 400-footer will only get you down about 90 feet deep, kings and steelhead will come up out of temp to chase bait and attack a lure.  Also, on sharp turns, a 400′ section will drop as deep as 120 feet or deeper.  When you’re fishing copper off the boards, don’t be afraid to fish a zig zag trolling pattern.

6.  You’re not going to be able to speed troll at 200′ because of swayback, so fish lures and flashers that work well at speeds of 2.1 to 2.5 mph.  Spoons like the NK in the size 28 and mag or Stingers in the Stingray or Mag are excellent.  You can’t fish a better 8″ flasher in the depths than the ProChip.   

7.  The deeper I fish, the more effective I find whole bait and Sushi Flies.

8.  Perhaps most important…, remember that the further west you fish and the  further you fish from shore, the higher the cold water.  If you can find fish there, you won’t have to fish deep!!!

Don’t let deep water trolling discourage you.   Keep it simple, use the right gear,  use your head, and you’ll catch fish.

Lake Ontario Salmon and Trout Fishing, April 2010 Report

The 2010 Lake Ontario salmon and trout charter fishing season started off with a bang  this year with  a few Atlantic salmon over 10 lbs. and some smaller 20″ - 21″ fish caught in Mexico Bay.  With summer like temps in early April,  more than normal of boats were on the water, and started seeing some nice browns.

The first trip of the season for Fish Doctor Charters was a short shakedown cruise on 4/20 followed by our first 2010 charter on 4/21.  Dave and Don, two old verterans and skilled lake trollers in their own right, joined me for an 8-hour AM trip.  As we pulled out of Oswego Marina just as light started to crack the eastern horizon, I looked at my Fish Hawk surface temp and it read 57 degrees…, unbelievable for April.  Flow in the Oswego River had been low at 1,000 cfs for some time, and the water had very little color to it.  

I figured fishing would be hot and heavy the first hour or two…, wrong!   After the first hour and not a nibble, all I could say to Don and Dave was, “Hmmm…”.  Then things started to happen, and action was steady in and out of the harbor until about 11:00 AM for browns up to 10.6 lbs. on my Epson digital scale, domestic rainbows just shy of the 21″ size limit, and two landlocked Atlantic salmon, both less than the 25″ size limit. 

The fishing was good, but what we learned from our first two trips was verrryyy interesting!!!  First, the browns, rainbows, landlocks and one coho we caught were pot-bellied and in top condition.  They had obviously been feeding heavily on something.  The past few years their primary April forage has been gobies because smelt have been scarce, and alewives had not moved inshore to spawn until May or June.  In April some years, browns have foraged on gobies almost exclusively.

I always clean and package my party’s catch onboard before returning to the dock, giving  me a check of the stomach contents of our fish.   What I saw when I gutted the browns was not solid gobies, but smelt in good numbers, lots of 3″ -4″ yearling alewives, a few 6″ - 7″ adult alewives, lots of spottail shiners, and a few gobies.  No wonder those browns were so fat…, warmer than normal water temperatures that activate browns and a diversity of all the forage they can eat!  These are  perfect conditions for maximum growth of browns, with 3-4 lb. April browns probably reaching 5-6 lbs. or larger by September. 

The other thing we noticed…, not one single brown, rainbow, Atlantic, or coho had a single lamprey attack mark…, not a scale missing.  This compares with the past few years when almost every single larger brown, 3-years old or older had been hammered by lampreys, and even some of the smaller 3-4 lb. 2-year old browns had been attacked by lamprey transformers, 6-12″ lampreys, fresh out of the rivers.   Lampreys may kill their host, in this case trout and salmon, if a lamprey is large enough and a fish is small enough, and the lampreys remove too much fluid from the fish’s body.  If  a lamprey doesn’t  kill the fish, the loss of body fluids, retards their growth.  Either way, lampreys are hurting the fishing.

Secondly, lampreys seem to attack brown trout and lake trout more than other species like steelhead, and studies have shown they select a larger fish to attack and feed on.  Both of these factors spell troube for big browns.  The more lampreys, the higher the mortality of brown trout and the poorer the survival of the larger trophy browns.  This is why in the last few years in eastern Lake Ontario we have not seen the numbers of brown trout larger than 15 lbs. that we used to see in the ’80’s and ’90’s.  Let’s hope what we’re seeing is real, not just an April blip on the lamprey radar screen, and we have fewer lampreys this season, which means more and bigger brown trout. 

The browns we’ve been catching on our first few trips have been hitting standard gear, mostly stickbaits and spoons fished on boards and riggers.   Silver/blue Flutterdevles and ham. silver/ brass 44 Suttons have been our hottest spoons.  The SB90 Megabait, especially in the Kiro Kin finish have been the best stickbaits.

As for location, we haven’t  had to leave the area around Oswego Harbor, but browns are being caught east of the harbor off Four Mile Point, where the warmer water of the Osweg River sweeps along the shoreline.  West of the harbor the water has been gin-clear with visibility to 20′ or more and fishing has been tough.  With the high winds we’re getting today, 4/27, and tomorrow(predicted), 4/28, there will be a lot of colored water west of Oswego Harbor, which should produce some good fishing there. 

If you’re fishing colored water in the sun, fire tiger and clown Smithwicks or other stickbaits with a little color usually work well.  Ditto for spoons, i.e.,  the lemon lime Flutterdevle, Bitterlemon MI Stinger, etc. 

See you on the water!

Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing - May Kings

Since 2004, spring fishing for king salmon, just 5 minutes outside Oswego Harbor, has been fantastic most years.  Just in the month of May anglers aboard my charter boat have boated up to 201 kings and 156 cohos, in the best of Mays.  The kings in varying abundance are always around in May, but the crazy cohos are more hit and miss.  In 2004, my anglers did not boat a single coho in May, but boated 150+ in May the very next year…, go figure!    This, in an area much better known for spring brown trout fishing.  When I first located these May kings in 2004, just outside Oswego Harbor, not one other boat was fishing for them.  The spring type fishery for these sleek, early season chromers continues on thru June, until the kings disperse. 

Experience has taught me that high spring flow in the Oswego River is a major attraction for baitfish and spring kings and cohos.  Since 2001, another great year for spring kings, the pattern seems clear, high flows produce hot spring salmon fishing.  Soo…, huge dumps of lake effect snow in central New York and the Finger Lakes are a kind of a love-hate thing.  You hate to move it during the winter, but you love it when high runoff in the Oswego River sucks in May kings.

Some springs, the Oswego River flows at close to 25,000 cfs, almost twice the normal flow for this time of year.   Laden with nutrients from thousands of acres of rich farmland in the Finger Lakes watershed, the huge greenish colored plume of water off Oswego Harbor is like an oasis in the Sahara to fish in eastern Lake Ontario.  It’s a magnet for both baitfish and predators like browns, cohos, and rainbows, but especially aggressively feeding spring kings.  Some years, the spring king fishing extends out from the Oswego area east into Mexico Bay, but most years the bullseye for eastern Lake Ontario king anglers is the 2-4 mile zone, just east of Oswego Harbor.

When it comes to cashing in on this super spring king fishing on a typical sunny May day, you should remember the number one rule of May salmon fishing…,  the early bird definitely gets the worm.  Leaving the dock at Oswego Marina at 5:00 AM, it’s only a short 5-minute boat ride for me to the fishing grounds in give or take 90 to 100 feet of water.  Most mornings I try to have my rods in the water just before daybreak.  At that time, almost no fish or bait can be seen on my 10” color Sitex video fish finder deeper than 30 feet.  This is one of the main reasons the May king salmon fishery was overlooked by anglers.

Some calm mornings at first light, salmon can be seen porpoising right on the surface…, exciting.  All the early morning action is in the top 30 feet of water, and I mean action.  Triples and quads are not unusual.  One morning, my crew of three,   ranging from 79 to 85 years old, including one lady angler, hooked and landed six kings at once from 13 - 19 lbs.  Whew!

  Even though the surface water temperature in early May is 39-40 degrees, on  sunny days, kings start to move deep by 7:00 -9:00 AM and are often flat on bottom in 120 feet of water by late morning, another reason the May king salmon fishery was overlooked.

ProChip Flashers and dodgers trailed by flies are my standard fare for spring kings.  Northern Kings and Michigan Stingers are also excellent spring king medicine.  Although, a standard spread of downriggers, Dipsey Divers, and copper line fished from planer boards get lures down to kings, I’m sure that stickbaits off the boards would catch fish right at the crack of daylight, if you wanted to run them.  The only problem is, once it starts to get light, the kings drop deeper quickly.  My personal favorite in May is a white ProChip 8 trailed by a blue pearl/glow fly, whenever I’m dealing with low to moderate light levels.  The Diehard NK28,  black alewife Stinger, blue dolphin Silver Streak, and other standard spoons are some of my favorites.   Copper off the boards is a killer!

Four king salmon at once in early May just out of Oswego Harbor!

One thing for sure…, you don’t need long rigger setbacks to catch May kings in early morning.  My anglers have boated hundreds that were caught on riggers, 25-30 feet down and only 12’ back.  As light levels rise, though, longer setbacks often fish better.  The same is true for wire Dipseys which on my boat are fishing on 40’ of wire, #3 setting, just as it starts to crack daylight.  One of my hottest early morning rigs is a thumper rod with a 10 oz. ball on 80’ of wire with a dodger/fly.   I start the morning with two copper lines fishing from each megaboard, the outer one with 100’ of copper and a spoon, and the inner one with 200’ of copper and a ProChip/fly. 

Although it is the green water plume of the Oswego River and the bait it holds that sucks in May kings to the Oswego area, the kings aren’t always located in the plume, especially early in May, when kings first move into the Oswego area from the main lake and the surface water temp is around 39-41 degrees.  You’ll often find them at this time just outside the plume in the gin clear water.  If you don’t find them there, move in shallower.  One year, 2008, we caught over half our early May kings right in the plume, just outside the harbor in 50-75 fow.  Why?  Only the kings can tell you that. 

One thing that I can tell you…, speed is critical, and the frigid 40 degree water of early May is no time for speed trolling, another reason why anglers overlooked May kings.  Many of the early May kings caught aboard my boat have been taken at trolling speeds less than 2.0 mph.

Oh, yeah, and there is a secret for precisely pin pointing the exact location of early spring kings, but I’ll leave that for a later blog.

See you on the water. 

Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing Tip - Fishing Sushi Flies

Using brass wire to fasten a Familiar Bite alewife strip to a Lake Ontario salmon fishing fly

Mike DuCross and his fishing buddies from Cornwall, Canada, were excited as we headed out of Oswego Harbor in eastern Lake Ontario in early September, 2009.  They had seen the catch of 20-30 lb. kings my morning charter carried off the dock,  and heard the war stories about how we had them dialed in all morning with whole alewives and big flashers.

With 30 years of experience fishing for fussy Lake Ontario kings, I wasn’t quite as confident.  With a hot bite all morning long, I didn’t really know what to expect on the  afternoon trip.   Two things  I did know, though, were that conditions had not changed a bit, in my eyes, since late morning, and the “X” on my chart plotter that marked the scene of the morning’s hot action was where we would start with the same hot 2-rigger spread of Kingston Tackle golden retriever Slashers and Familiar Bite alewives in sun-faded chartreuse bait heads, one rigger at 130’ and back 25’, the other at 120’ and back 15’.

After an hour of trolling without a touch, everything looked the same in early afternoon as it had in late morning on the 10” Sitex CVS 210.  There were   plenty of kings in the area, but their mood had changed.  Altering  leader lengths between flasher and bait and switching  bait head colors had made no difference. 

With unwavering confidence in the big  silver and gold prism taped golden retriever flashers in bright midday light for staged kings,  I had opted for changes in leader length and bait head color, to no avail, before deciding on one last change before doing something drastic. 

Reaching into my bait cooler, I pulled out a a freshly salted Familiar Bite alewife strip, and securely wired it to the leading beak hook of a Tournament Tie on a Mirage fly with a 48” leader and replaced the whole bait with the baited Mirage fly.  After dropping the rigger back to same depth of 120’ with the same 15’ setback as before,  the rod fired in minutes.  Immediately after I reset it the second time, it fired again.  Meanwhile, the whole bait, 10’ deeper at 130’and 25’ back was just a slug.  While fighting the second fish, Mike  pulled the deep rigger, while I baited another fly, and we reset the rigger exactly as before,  130’ down and 25’ back.  Before we untangled the second king from the net, the deep rigger with the baited fly fired.

.  Why a king salmon would select a baited fly over a whole alewife one time and do the reverse the next time  I cannot say.  What I can say is that it’s not the first time I’ve seen it happen.  

A couple hours later, as the sun dropped toward the horizon and light intensity at the riggers dropped, you guessed it.  The program changed and the kings decided they absolutely loved whole Familiar Bite alewives 60” behind an 11” glow green ProChip 11.  

Baited flies and, before that, baited hoochies or squids, in combination with flashers have been a go-to rig for me aboard my charter boat, ever since my first trip to Alaska  in 1990.   I was fortunate to  be invited aboard several commercial salmon trolling boats,  and the first thing I noticed on deck was  buckets of 11” plastic flashers, mostly white, green, chartreuse, and red.   Hanging on the rear of the cabins were rows and rows of  3 ½” hoochies(squids) in a myriad of colors, some for kings, some for cohos.  Closer inspection of the hoochies showed a piece of light brass wire, inside each hoochie, attached to the eye of a large commercial single hook.

The wire on these hooks was for attaching strips of herring inside the hoochie.  The bait strips are generally about 3 inches in length, and a hoochie rarely goes in the water for Alaskan kings without them.

The commercial trollers also showed me how they rigged whole herring, herring filets, and cut plugs, all of which they carry onboard, along with spoons and plugs,  when they’re trolling. To a man, they were adamant about how fussy king salmon were and how important it was to master a variety of techniques to consistently catch fish in all conditions. 

I never forgot that lesson, and returned to Lake Ontario with not only a new perspective on fishing bait for kings, but a new conviction to do my utmost to become as versatile as possible in fishing for them .  

Today, my favorite flashers with baited flies include, 8” ProChips, 11” ProChips and HotChips, and 13” Kingston Tackle Slashers in a variety of color and finishes.  I use 36”-48”, 60 lb. mono leaders behind 11” and 13” flashers, and 19” to 30” leaders behind 8” flashers.  Flasher/fly color combos are exactly the same as for clean flies.

Rather than the single hook used by commercial trollers, I prefer a tournament tie with a 5/0 beak hook and a #2 bronze treble.  The same tournament tie used with clean flies can be used with bait, but I prefer to extend the leader length between the beak and treble hooks about 1 ½” so the treble trails at the tail of the bait.  Although, the alewife bait strip can be hooked on the leading beak hook, even a properly prepped alewife bait strip softens quickly in fresh water and seldom will stay on the hook very long. 

The secret to keeping an alewife bait strip secured inside the fly is to wrap it on the beak hook just behind the hook eye using soft .020” diam. brass wire.  Although the brass wire can be attached to the beak hook on a pretied Tournament Tie, I like to attach it before I snell the hook, by simply placing it through the eye of the hook, pulling the brass wire down along the shank of the hook, tying the snell, and trimming the brass wire leaving about 1 ½ inches of each end of the wire extending to each side of the hook. 

The head end of a correctly shaped bait strip  that is tapered to about 3/8” at the head end of the strip is then laid skin down against the hook shank, and the brass wire is wrapped from opposite directions around the bait with enough tension to slightly bury the wire into the meat on the bait strip.  It is not necessary to twist the ends of the wire together to hold the strip.  Using this setup, the bait will stay attached to the beak hook as long as you fish it.  I tie my own, lightly dressed flies to use with bait. 

From 18 years of experience fishing baited flies, I’ve found that elongated diamond shaped bait strips about 3” in length and ½” to 1” wide, tapered to 3/8” at the head and ½” at the tail  is about right.  The later in the season, the larger the bait strip, including strips with tails as large as ¾ inches in width.  Bait strips are filleted from the both sides of an alewife and trimmed to shape.

The better the quality of the bait strip, the better it catches fish.  Availability of alewives to use as whole bait or bait strips has always limited the use of bait for Great Lakes trout and salmon.  The Familiar Bite Co., which harvests, brines, and vacuum packs freshly collected alewives in 8-packs has now solved this problem.   To properly prep quality alewife bait strips, filet them immediately when fresh or immediately after removing partially thawed bait from the vacuum pack. Trim them to shape, and place them in a ziplock bag of noniodized salt.  They will keep indefinitely refrigerated.  I carry a ziplock bag of preshaped bait strips in a small bait cooler along with a brine jar of whole alewives and an ice pack.

Years of experience and millions of Great Lakes king salmon have proven clean flies catch kings, but I’ve found  that baited flies will outfish clean flies for unaggressive fish, whether  they are just negative,  nonfeeding staged fish, or big, lazy fish.

Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing Tip, Sushi Flies

An early morning king that hit a Purple Passion flasher and glow green Fish Doctor Sushi Fly on August 13, 2009.

If you’re not fishing 11″ Pro-Troll flashers and Sushi flies for Lake Ontario salmon, you’re missing a bet.  These 11-inch “Big Guys” and flies baited with Familiar Bite alewife strips have been our go-to rigs aboard the Fish Doctor lately.  If  you’ve fished cut bait behind these big attractors in the past, you know the color combos.

Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing with Copper Line

If you had been on board the “Fish Doctor” with Capt. Ernie Lantiegne with Fish Doctor anglers Jerry and John Romeo on the morning of July 8, 2009,  you would have been impressed with several things;

1. Lake Ontario Salmon fishing in July is outstanding

2. Lake Ontario’s chinook salmon are second to none in size

3.  With every salmon and one lake trout boated all caught using the same technique, copper line  trolled off megaboards, there is no question that copper is deadly for scattered, offshore king salmon.

4.  Dodgers and flies are still highly effective…, every fish we caught on 7/8, was  taken on this age old technique.  Ditto for 7/7.

On our trip today,  the weather was overcast and the seas choppy with winds from the northwest.  Salmon and the alewife bait schools they feed on were scattered to heck and gone.  Recent heavy winds have pushed cold water deep, with cold water in the 50’s down 100 to 140 feet, over 450 to 150 feet of water, respectively.  Water fleas are as bad as they get now, fouling even 30 lb. test mono, and almost ruling out wire Dipsys.

In these conditions, we rigged 450′, 500′, and 600′ copper lines off the megaboards(oversized triple planer boards) and ran a set of white/white, white /blue, chrome/blue, and silver glo/blue dodger/flies on the riggers and boards.  Thank the Lord for .o37 diameter copper, which is basically water flea proof.  With fish scattered it is “pedal-to-the-metal” time, with trolling speeds running from 2.7 to 3.0 mph.

The result, a respectable catch of kings from 16-20 lbs., plus a lake trout, that must have been feeling its “Wheaties”!  If you haven’t tried fishing copper line, you’re missing out on a fish-catching technique.

Lake Ontario Salmon Fishing - Meat and Mylar

Fishing salmon with baited flies

An hour into their afternoon trip, Mike Ducross and his buddies from Cornwall, Canada, were not quite as optimistic as they had been after watching my morning charter carry heavy coolers of 20–30 lb. Lake Ontario kings off the dock.  They had heard the war stories about how we had them dialed in all morning with whole alewives and big flashers, and knew we were returning to the very same “X” on my chart plotter.  The Sitex fish finder showed the kings were still there, but they were turning their noses up at our 2-rigger spread of 13” Slashers and whole alewives down 120 and 130 feet.

With unwavering confidence in the big  silver and gold prism taped golden retriever flashers in bright midday light for staged kings,  I had opted for changes in leader length and bait head color, to no avail, before deciding on one last change before doing something drastic. 

Still firm in my belief that when a big king bellies up to the sushi bar he’s looking for one thing, alewives, I reached into my bait cooler for a freshly salted alewife strip and  replaced the whole bait with a baited fly.  Minutes after dropping the rigger back to same depth of 120’ with the same 15’ setback, the rod fired.  Immediately I reset it the second time, and it fired again.  Meanwhile, the whole bait, 10’ deeper at 130’and 25’ back was just a slug.  While fighting the second fish, Mike  pulled the deep rigger, while I baited another Mirage fly, and we reset the rigger exactly as before,  130’ down and 25’ back.  Before we could untangle the second king from the net, the deep rigger fired.

Four hours later, as the sun angled toward the horizon and light intensity at the riggers dropped, you guessed it, the program changed and the kings decided they absolutely loved whole alewives in a glow green bait head 60” behind a glow green splatterback HotChip 11.  

Why a king salmon, with a brain the size of a pea,  would select a baited fly over a whole alewife one time and do the reverse the next,  I cannot imagine.  What I can say is it’s not the first time I’ve seen it happen, and I’ll be ready when it happens again. 

Baited flies and, before that, baited hoochies or squids, in combination with flashers have been a go-to rig for me aboard my charter boat, ever since my first trip to Alaska  in 1990.   Fortunate to  be invited aboard several commercial salmon trolling boats,  the first thing I noticed on deck was  buckets of 11” plastic flashers, mostly white, green, chartreuse, and red.   Hanging on the rear of the cabins were rows and rows of  3 ½” hoochies(squids) in a myriad of colors, some for kings, some for cohos.  Closer inspection of the hoochies showed a piece of light brass wire, inside each hoochie, attached to the eye of a 6/0 single hook.

The wire on these hooks was for attaching 3”- 4” herring strips inside the hoochie, which rarely go in the water for Alaskan kings without bait.

The  trollers also showed me how they rigged whole herring, herring filets, and cut plugs, all of which they carry onboard, along with spoons and plugs, during an king salmon opening. To a man, they were adamant about how fussy king salmon were and how important it was to master a variety of techniques to consistently catch fish in all conditions. 

I never forgot that lesson, and returned to Lake Ontario with  a new perspective on fishing bait for kings and  a conviction to do my utmost to become as versatile as possible in fishing for them .   

Today, my favorite flashers with baited flies include, 8” ProChips, 11” ProChips and HotChips, and 13” Kingston Tackle Slashers in a variety of colors and finishes.  I use 36”- 48” leaders on 11”- 13” flashers and 19”- 30” leaders on 8” flashers.  Flasher/fly color combos are the same as for clean flies.

Rather than the single hook used by commercial trollers, I prefer a tournament tie with a 5/0 beak hook and a #2 bronze treble.  The same tournament tie used with clean flies can be used with bait, but I prefer to extend the leader length between the beak and treble hooks about 1 ½” so the treble trails at the tail of the bait.  Although, the alewife bait strip can be hooked on the leading beak hook, even a properly prepped alewife bait strip softens quickly in fresh water and seldom will stay on a hook very long. 

The secret to keeping an alewife bait strip secured inside the fly is to wrap it on the beak hook just behind the hook eye using soft .020” diam. brass wire.  Although the brass wire can be attached to the beak hook on a pretied Tournament Tie, I like to attach it before I snell the hook, by simply placing a 3” length of wire midway through the eye of the hook, pulling the brass wire down along the shank of the hook, and tying the snell, leaving about 1 ½ inches of each end of the wire extending to each side of the hook. 

The head end of a correctly shaped bait strip,  tapered to about 3/8”,  is then laid skin down against the hook shank, and the brass wire is wrapped from opposite directions around the bait with enough tension to slightly bury the wire into the meat on the bait strip.  It is not necessary to twist the ends of the wire together to hold the strip.  The wired bait will remain in the fly as long as you fish it.  I prefer lightly dressed flies for use with bait strips. 

From 18 years of experience fishing what have now become know on my charter boat as sushi flies, I’ve found that elongated diamond shaped bait strips about 3” in length and ½” to 1” wide, tapered to 3/8” at the head and ½” at the tail are about right.  The later in the season, the larger the bait strip, including strips with tails as wide as ¾”.  Bait strips are filleted from both sides of an alewife and trimmed to shape. The better the quality of a bait strip, the better it catches fish. 

Availability of alewives to use as whole bait or bait strips has always limited the use of alewives for Great Lakes trout and salmon.  The Familiar Bite Co., which harvests, brines, and vacuum packs fresh alewives in 8-packs,  has now solved this problem.   To properly prep quality bait strips, filet alewives when fresh or immediately after removing partially thawed bait from a vacuum pack, trim them to shape, and place them in a ziplock bag of noniodized salt.  They will keep indefinitely refrigerated.  I carry  ziplocks of preshaped bait strips in a small bait cooler along with a brine jar of whole alewives and an ice pack.

Years of experience and millions of Great Lakes king salmon have proven clean flies catch fish.  When it comes to inactive kings, though, especially staged fish or big, lazy fish, I’ve found that sushi flies are just what the doctor ordered