Mooching for salmon

In the good old days, we raked herring and then mooched with 1.5 ounce banana weight and 12-15 pulls of line. This was off Flora, Whaling Station, Tribune Bay, Norris Rock and the Lighthouse (Denman & Hornby Isl).
 
Every year we bought live bait at Sewells and fished Hole in the Wall, the ferries had no problem weaving between us.
 
My first experience with mooching was at Flora back in 1974. My fatherinlaw would rake the herring and hook it in the lip. We used a very small weight and just stripped out 8 or 10 pulls of line. Then you'd wait. You could see the school of coho come in as boats ahead of you would hoop and holler. Then it would be your turn.

I learned to motor mooch in Sansum Narrows with cut plug and engine in and out of gear. 70 pulls with 6 ounces.
 
x2 on Alk`s and slab burn`s notes...We also mooched for coho in the Chrome Island, Flora and south end of Hornby area with raked herring...difficult to rake now because there just isn`t the abundance of herring in the shallows as there used to be....but it is still possible. In the absence of live bait I use frozen herring and look for seagulls on the herring balls south of Tribune and then just power mooch the bait around the edges of the ball and a little deeper i.e.15-20 feet.
 
Wanna mooch? I can show you.
Not hard or complicated. Just different.
 
Yeah the Sansum Narrows was great, mooching off the Bluff at tide change with a blue cloud of outboard exhaust choking the area. I loved it and we caught so beauties. Also jerk fishing off Burial of Hueys produced some nice fish. I still have a few rip tides in the box that I use once and a while.
 
I think Secret Cove Marina sold live herring as of 4 years ago and I'm pretty sure that the floating dock near coopers green did as well (probably not anymore). I was lucky enough to catch the final years of the mooching fishery when it was still somewhat popular. The last few times I did it was when returning over the christmas holidays. So much fun and very effective! Worth trying if you ever have access to live herring.
 
if baitrix and frozen herring are all we have, and it's not possible to rake some herring--I guess we will try frozen or artificial---some of that baitrix could fool me- maybe with a little scent rubbed on it can trick a spring???
 
Ya... you need the real deal, live bait in good condition. The alternative is jigging macdeeps while you're mooching with the live ones.
 
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