Commercial Salmon Trolling Forum

Can travel anywhere, will pay my own way, anytime after Thanksgiving.

So I just finished my first season on a power troller in Sitka now I'm hooked! I'm looking for a way to keep fishing over winter. While its was my first season trolling I'm a long time East Coast fisherman with experience longlining, gillnet, jigging machines etc etc. I'll work in any fishery, I'm e...

When I longlined back East we used SST charts some boats had "downtemp" on their fishfinders. But for sword and tuna you're not really setting the gear deep so the surface temp is a good guide. For up here run a thermometer tied to your cannon ball, should give you a good starting point.

Classic thread! I will say for the gillnetters I've talked to (from Bristol Bay, Cook Inlet and PWS) they all want you to plead your case as to why a 30+ year old can do it. They seem to want youngsters and don't think we "older guys" can keep up. But then how does some 18yo with no experi...

Two weeks till my flight to Sitka, I'm about as antsy as it gets!

It used to be a profitable and really fun way to earn a living but its just a circus anymore. Its driven the price of used boats sky high and the price of fish way down. This fall under the GenCat permit kooks can land 3 swords, making even more of a circus atmosphere, its just a mess!

No worries, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel but curiosity kills the cat. If I never asked I might not have found out about the electrical field, which is pretty cool info. As for the poles again just curiosity, I'm not saying one way is better or anything like that. Yessir Lane! I'm sure I will...

Interesting about the wire and the electrical field it creates. I understand the stress factors regarding lowering the poles but back east the outriggers are massive in comparison, some are steel but most are aluminum and quite a few of the boats I've worked on had no winches aside from a good block...

This is probably a stupid question and I'm guessing it may have been covered before, so forgive my ignorance but has anyone ever tried to use heavy mono in place of cable? For instance 500lb Lindgren Pitman, I understand the cable has less drag and would obviously require less scope to get to the de...

Roger that Akfish1, you either belong on deck or back on the dock!

I was just trying to draw parallels, I've never fished gear like you guys fish before but the greenstick concept, aside from fishing the surface, seems relatively the same. I'm hoping the learning curve will not be steep considering the gear I'm used to.

Any of you guys familiar with Greenstick trolling?

Hello everyone, I'm a East Coast Tuna fisherman who got tired of the drama associated with the fishery and found a job trolling out of Sitka. Obviously the two are totally different but there are a few subtle similarities and I hope that through this site I can at least get an idea of what to expect...