Fishing Pressured Water

Fishermen teach fish what "not" to bite

Timothy Kusherets

Lots and lots of fishermen love to fish in buckets and to do that means combat fishing. Anglers that have been around carry a negative association with the term combat fishing but I don’t. I love it, especially when there’s a lot of fish in the area. Look, there’s nothing you can do to stop fish from feeling the pressure of fishermen but you can use the other fishermen to your advantage when the bite goes off. It’s called “fishing pressured water”, and it works.

These anglers know there’s fish in the slot directly in front of them, hundreds of them. When fish are pressured they will move to the deepest and farthest recesses of a river to get away from fishermen. When you see a situation like this fish above or below the glut of fishermen and you’re sure to garner strikes from fish. The foremost fisherman in the photograph is in a great position for getting those strikes with the two anglers on the bank upriver in the next best positions. Remember; think about the water being pressured. It's not only possible to find holding fish but it's equally reasonable to get them on the hook once you know how to entice them. In many cases it means smaller test, from the four to eight-pound range, and smaller hooks from the No. 6 to No. 2 sizes. Combining small lines and hooks with unique scents will put fish back on the bite within seconds to minutes.

The edification fish receive during any season where many fishermen are involved teach fish what “not” to bite. It doesn’t matter what angler’s use when there are a lot of them. Fish will go off the bite when the see the same things over and over again. It doesn’t even matter if it’s the same offering or a similar scent, pressure will put fish off the bite; but for the very reason that puts fish off the bite is the same thing that can put them back on.
Not every fish is going to get caught that gets hooked. Anglers lose fish all the time, but once a fish has been stung it has learned what not to bite. Not many fishermen know it but salmon and steelhead communicate with auditory (sound) and olfaction (scent) triggers. When an alarm from a hooked fish has been sent out fish will scatter and they “will remember” and stay off the bite. It is the motion of the hooked fish and the scent secreted through the skin, fish slime, which alarm fish; this is where the really important stuff comes into play. New offerings and scents introduced the water will trigger those same panicked fish into biting. I’ve seen it happen thousands of times over the course of the last two decades. In the presence of anglers fishing from the crack of dawn until noon when someone heads to the bank and almost immediately hooks into fish. I do it all the time; especially when I want to fish in those buckets too. All you have to do is watch the other fishermen and make sure not to use whatever they’re using. I don’t mean to use a different color corkie (lil' corky)when corkies are used or different kinds of spoons when spoons are used. I mean something different entirely. If corkies are being used put on some bait. If bobber-jigs are being used try a spinner. Make sure to adjust casting tactics as well. Watch combat fishermen, more often than not, they tend to fish the same slots, seams, and tail-outs. Fish further out or closer in towards the bank. If the fish have been pressured enough it is reasonable to assume that getting a strike within a few casts will happen. Knowing how fish behave given certain stimuli has aided me in catching, and releasing, many fish.

This kind of fishing pressure is about as intense as any stretch of water can get. Initially, when two or three fishermen had occupied the area it should have occurred to other anglers that it was too crowded for such a small stretch of water and that the right thing to do was to find other spots that could produce without bumping into each other and risk snagging both fish and each other’s fishing line, but that didn't happen. These anglers literally “squeezed” in a tiny slot to bombard fish attempting to migrate up the river. In this particular slot where they're fishing Steelhead and Salmon have no recourse of where they can swim. They have to pass through the slot because the width of the river flows too shallow and fast for them to traverse it anywhere else. It's barely deep enough for boats to drift down it and sleds to motor up it.
While it’s amiable that these fishermen have figured out to fish in a small spot without getting in the way of each other too much, the glut looks both unsavory and unsportsmanlike with more lines in the water than there were fish, and the gear was not much better. Every fisherman here was using fishing line no weaker than fifty-pound test with some of them keeping fish that were snagged reeling them in backwards indicating fish unwilling to bite into their large offerings on even larger hooks. Some of the hooks were so large that the tines could not be sharpened to a point.
The pressure exerted here puts fish off the bite for the duration of the day and many of these fishermen proved it by using a technique known infamously as “flossing”. It’s a technique that uses heavy weights and long leaders where the fishing line passes through the opening and closing mouths of struggling fish trying to breathe due to the presence of anxieties exerted by this type of intense pressure. When they feel the resistance on the line they pull back with a looping motion to snag fish on the outside of the mouth and near the gill plate. While this kind of fishing is subjective to interpretations of law as to the legality of it, this method of fishing is clearly unethical and should be avoided by all “true” outdoorsman.
Boaters fishing above and below this gang of fish snaggers are the true sportsman here, and with the fish biting where they’re at prove it time and again. Fishing pressured water like this can produce above and below the glut.
Don’t misunderstand. Shoulder-to-shoulder fishing is widely referred to as combat fishing, and is truly a remarkable way to learn how to fish with the trading of knowledge from one angler to another. In most cases combat fishing is done in wide open water where fish and fishermen both have sporting chance to succeed. Combat fishing is not “flossing” and should be looked upon as a great resource for beginning fishermen, but there are unspoken rules of etiquette and law, which should be followed.

The day I caught this fish I landed 19 salmon and 4 steelhead within a five-hour period. The significance of the event was that it was done in the presence of about a thousand fishermen. Many of them came to me to find out how I was hooking into fish when the vast majority weren’t. Right there on the river I held a clinic to teach them what gear was needed and what it would take to convince pressured fish to bite. After changing their fishing tactics many of them started hooking into fish almost immediately upon hitting the water.

© Timothy Kusherets 2007/08