anorthern hunter,
When a fish hits ALL THE GEAR comes up. I fish Nootka, and the bites are not that plentiful, and sometimes there is a tyee on the end. Don't chance the chaos. you will have at least 10 minutes of fight on an average fish, and often 1/2 an hour on a big fish, so lots of time to pull the gear.
Also, the boat chaos in the pack means extra lines out are extra trouble. Get the gear up, turn and chase the fish so that another boat does not cross you and cut you off when the fish runs 80 + yards on the first run.
The reason for running all the lines you can is trying to find the magic combination. You can run two with hardware / hootchies, and 2 with bait and cover a lot of water depth. Keep changing until you find the pattern. One year it was a blue flasher with a blue anchovie head holder. It took 2 days to find the pattern, and an evening and a morning to limit on nice fish. No one else was hitting anything. Only rod that caught (only had one blue flasher and a couple blue head holders) was the blue on blue combo.
Another fun trick is to go as FAST AS YOU CAN with the gear down at 90 - 100 feet without tripping out of the release clips. The lines will come up to about 45 degree angle. Then cut the power, and let the balls slowly descend. As you approach 90 degrees, start hard on the throttle until the lines come back up again, then cut the power and let the gear settle back down. One year this trick had 6 good springs in a couple of hours with some amazing hits and huge runs. Everyone else was just wondering if we had engine trouble and watching the action.
Drewski