Playing the Spoons

It doesn’t take much for me to get excited about fishing. I love watching the water, enjoying the outdoors, the mystery of not knowing what will happen next. Heck, fish form the basis of most of my diet. To all that good stuff, you have to add the challenge of trying new things. There is always some new gimmick or gismo or some technique that deserves a chance to succeed.
Often I’m the last one to try something new. If something has worked in the past, I’ll keep at it till I have some success, often long after everyone else has changed over. I guess you could classify me as “old school” in my outlook.

But this fall I decided to try something new that a few of my buddies were enjoying. A little different piece of hardware had surfaced to challenge the temperament of the wily salmon charging up the Columbia. It was new to me, and to most of my buddies, but its origin was ancient indeed.

Lore of the Lures
No one knows when the first prehistoric angler put a warped chunk of bone or carved ivory on a line and jigged it up and down, creating a wiggling motion that attracted some poor fish to strike, but we do know that it was thousands of years ago, and the lure and its modern imitators have brought in millions of fish, of many species, on many waters.

This versatile lure, called a “spoon” to those who work its magic, has long been a mainstay of the commercial fisherman. Generally oval in shape, with a spoon-like hollow on one side, the lure can be trolled or jigged and has a baitfishlike motion that can drive fish crazy. It can be weighted to cast far out into a lake or river, sinking rapidly to the depths, or can be thin enough to dance well in shallow tidewaters, requiring little weight to get to the fish’s level, enticing a strike.

Most fishermen chasing salmon in the Columbia use a trolled herring. This baitfish is certainly a natural attractor and works just fine. But it can prove to be expensive, hard to find, and leave scales and guts all over the place during the moments of battle.

Commercial fishermen, working the open ocean, often use spoons to catch salmon. They are relatively cheap, usually less than four bucks and sometimes half that. They don’t twist like spinners, but wobble along on one plane, reducing the need for lots of swivels and preventing tangles. They come in lots of pretty patterns and styles, something you can try in any sunlight, foggy or clear.

Bait Test
I went down to Englund Marine, our local sports and commercial fishing emporium, and bought a dozen, put some suitable hooks on them, and pulled away from the dock. My buddy Hogan and his pal Jim went along to enjoy the day and help with the experiment. I was going to troll all day with the spoon; they’d use herring.

The spoons were pretty light even with a 5/0 hook, so you need to put a trolling sinker or a diver in front to get it down to fish level. Outriggers work great if you have them, and the “naked” spoon is great for playing a hooked fish.

The first few hours, I fell a little behind. Jim landed the first fish, a nice 7-pound silver. It had taken a trolled herring, following a lead torpedo sinker. Then Hogan got a hit on the same outfit, but his fish was a couple of pounds smaller. To make matters worse, it still had its adipose fin identifying it as a native fish so we had to release it. Hogan was whining; he had promised his wife a fish dinner. Jim quieted him down a little by offering to share a steak or two.

Big Strike
We were just about ready to call it a day, a slow one at that, when my reel started screaming. Something had grabbed my bright brass spoon! As I picked up the rod and gave it a jerk, I knew I was in business; the line was flying off the spool and the drag was set plenty tight. I was overjoyed that the boats had thinned out some. If we had caught this critter in the traffic jam we had been in earlier, one of the other boats would have gone right over my line.

When he finally surfaced, the big salmon was a good hundred yards off our stern. It took quite awhile, but finally I managed to get him close enough for Jim to slide him into the net. The fish filled the whole bottom of the ice chest. A local fish, it wasn’t nearly as silver as Jim’s coho, but it was big and round and would have good meat, plus a good four pounds of eggs to cure. At a little over 30 pounds, it was the best fish I’d taken on the river in several years.

I promised Hogan I’d give him a chunk, and packed up my spoons for the trip home. Next time out we wouldn’t buy any bait, I was going to drop by Englund Marine and get another dozen spoons. Maybe a rainbow one could get me a 40-pound fish!