Floating Skein for EARLY KING SALMON (PB KING?!)

Hey what's up guys, Chiefs here joining you stream side. Today's video I'm going to be showing you my PB King Salmon, which actually ended up being my first river king of the year and also my very first fish in my brand new Stealthcraft hooligan raft. Super insane fight, I was out with my buddy Jack and his dog Boca, we were on the river for like eight hours at this point. Hadn't hooked a single fish all day and we pulled it off with a buzzer beater with an absolutely insane fight. So hope you guys enjoy. If you guys want to experience anything like this yourself, I have officially started a fishing guide business. I have a bunch of information, I got my links and stuff in the description below. But yeah, I'm taking guided fishing trips. If you guys didn't see my last video, I've already got a couple people booking with me and my schedule is still pretty open on some really hot dates. So if you guys are interested in that, hit me up on social media. All my contact information will be down below in the description and at the end of this video, I will be going over my full skein setup, how I like to rig, and I'm going to give you guys an in-depth tutorial on all my rigging, my rods, my reels, my line, my terminal tackle, you name it. So if you guys want to make it till the end, God bless you. Thank you guys so much. If you do enjoy, please leave a like, comment, subscribe. It really helps out the channel and I hope you guys enjoy. I'll see you in the next one. Holy this sucks, man. Oh, you see that? All right, bro. Hold up, hold up. Bro, we waited all day for this. All right, let me like float out this like little chunks of skein and then we'll be done. It'd be sick if Ellen rode tomorrow, dude. There it is. There it is. Huge. Dude, please be with me on this one. Oh my gosh, dude. It's huge. Like Jack, it's huge. This is a big ass king. Come on, please do. I need you. I know you're here. I need your energy right now, dude. I need energy right now. Come on, Jack. I need you, bro. I need you here. I can lay the hammer on that. Oh my gosh, dude. I don't know. Oh yeah. Oh my God. It's huge, dude. No, I'm not. Yeah, you're around that. Where? You're around this. What? Here, take the rod. Take the rod. Take this. Hold the rod for me. What do you need me to do? Hold up. Hold up. Don't put too much tension. You got it? Let's go. No, you're good. No, you're good. You're good. No, you're not, though. Here, let me see it. Let me see it. Is it totally? I believe you're under this that tree right there. Oh my God. It's right there. Dude, here. You might have to jump in. You might have to. You might have to jump in. Dude, it's huge in chrome. We got like two shots at this. Do whatever you have to do. Dude, I might have to jump in. Dude, I might have to jump in. This is insane, but I'm doing it. This is insane, but I am going to do it. How deep was this? Dude, I don't know. Okay. Dude, I have it on. I might be able to pull it. It's still, dude, I am pulling on it right now. Will you turn the camera to me, please? Dude, that is huge. No way. Oh my God. Oh my God. Holy cow. Oh my God. Probably have you get low with me. Dude, this is, this is the only fish we have hooked. I'm sorry, not hooked. We hooked another one. This is the first kangaroo in my new raft and this might be 25, 30 pounds. Like, I'm not kidding. That's an unreal fish. This is awesome. That's an unreal fish. Pull that up again. Straight skein biter right here. Ran all the way under the logs. I, dude, this is, this is the biggest king I think I've ever caught, Jack. I'm not even kidding. This might be my PBK. Look at it. Look at it. This is, this is probably the biggest king I've ever got. Dude, this is 40 by like 24. That's my, that's my final guess. Fish. See how long he is? He's like tip on the tail just past 40. To lay this out, he's past 40. All right. So let's just call it 40 and a half. My, what do you think? Do you think that's his fattest? Yeah. The 61, 61 is. 24, 40 by 64. Did I not just say that? Is that what you said? Yeah, I said that. Great choice. 40 by 64. I fell right off the rock here. All right, dude. All right, yo, what's going on guys? Hopefully the stream isn't a little too loud in the background, but like I said, I'm going to be giving you guys a full in-depth tutorial on how I rig for skein fishing for salmon in the great lakes. We're going to start off with the rod and reel combo. I find that rods anywhere from about a 10, six to a 12 foot are that perfect, happy medium for fishing your medium to larger size rivers. You can also run them in creeks, but it's pushing it a little bit, but it can be done. So here I have a mags custom rod. This rod is 11 feet long. It is line rated for 10 to 17 pound leader and has a fast action tip. So it allows you to have a little bit of backbone and also cushion your leader at the same time. Very imperative for float fishing. 11 foot is typically my preference when it comes to skein fishing. It's got a nice backbone on it, but it's also got a soft tip that can absorb a lot of head shakes and cushion your lighter leaders. And we have it paired up with a Shimano Vanford. It is a 3000 series reel, has a little bit more line capacity and a higher drag than some of your lighter reels. And this reel is going to allow you to hold around 120 to 130 yards of 40 pound, super slick eight power pro braid. So that's what I'm running this year. I've ran 30 in the past. It works good, but I like having just a little bit thicker line. And this is where my rigging gets a little bit different this year, guys. Instead of running straight mainline to my leader, I have now incorporated a inline knot from my mainline to a bumper leader. So this year I'm going to be running a bumper leader. And for my bumper leader, we have an Albright knot. I believe it's called an Albright knot. It's a line to line knot. We've got braid going to 20 pound fluorocarbon. The fluorocarbon that I'm running here is about, I don't know, roughly five and a half, six feet long. I'm running 20 pound test, and this is going to be the leader that I'm going to be running my float on. And so for my float size, I like typically running around a 15 to a 20 gram float. I like being able to run a lot of bulk shot just to get my skein to the bottom. I would almost say it's imperative that if you don't have a heavier rig, it's going to be tough to get your skein down because skein has such a neutral buoyancy that it always just wants to float up to the top. So I like running heavier so I can run heavier shot to just anchor that skein right to the bottom and get it in that strike zone. Now, quick little tip I want to show you guys. It's not necessary, but I do find it to be very helpful for my float rigging. I like to run three pieces of surgical tubing right here. I run a clear piece on the top and I like to run two on the bottom because sometimes when you get some pretty nasty snags and you retrieve it back, obviously as some of you guys know, your bobber comes slingshotting right back at you, twist it up all messed up. And a lot of the times when that happens, especially if you don't have good float tubing, you're going to end up tearing one of these pieces of float tubing. And if you don't have a spare one, a lot of the times you're going to be left having to completely rig up. Now when I break off, let's say I lose my top piece, it tears open. I now have a second piece that I can just simply slide up, place back on my top. Super cheap insurance doesn't impair your rigging at all and I find it to be very helpful. So it's something that you guys can do. Like I said, it's not a necessity, but it is a small tip that I have found to pay dividends all throughout the season, whether it be steelhead, salmon, doesn't really matter. So after the bobber setup here, guys, I'll sometimes run a size 7 water gremlin split shot. Sometimes I'll run a size 5. Depends on the float I'm using. Like I said, I like to run 15 to 20. So we've got the 6 foot leader here. We got a 15 gram float. And for our shot, I just like to run a simple bulk shot. I run three size 4 water gremlin split shots and I have that coming down to a 65 pound VMC barrel swivel. I like running these heavier barrel swivels. It doesn't really seem to deter fish from biting and they're trusty. You don't want to bend out a micro swivel on a big fish. It's one of the worst feelings ever and you're going to hate yourself for it. I promise. So the two knots I like to run. I like running two tri-lean knots off of this right here. And this is where it gets interesting. My leader, guys, I do not run a long leader. I do not run freaking two, three foot crazy leaders. Nothing crazy like that. I like to anchor my present. I like to anchor my bait right down in their face. And even with steelhead, I only run 18 to 12 inch leader. Honestly, I don't run anything super crazy. We're already running fluorocarbon right here. It's going to be transparent in the water and we size it down just a touch right here with a 16 inch leader of actually 16 pound sniper. And so this fluorocarbon is going to allow you when you, if you were to ever get any sort of snag right here with your hook, you're only going to be losing this much leader in your hook instead of your whole rig and your flow and everything else. So I like running a heavier bumper leader of 20 pound and I'll run it down to a size 16 leader right here. So we have 16 inches precisely. I'd say down to a size five water gremlin split shot. I like to run this 50% of the way down the leader. And at the bottom of that, we have a Raven sickle hook. These hooks are freaking nasty guys. I love these hooks. I wouldn't recommend any other hook. They're great. I really, I really, really like these hooks a lot and I have it paired up with an egg loop knot. Maybe I'll give you guys a little knot tutorial in this video or I'll save it for another upload later on in the season. But if you guys don't know how to tie an egg loop knot, I'll probably make a video, but I do know that there's tutorials all over YouTube. So a knot like this will allow you to holster your bait. So essentially what happens is you push your line through and it creates a larger loop for your bait. You can put anything in here, shrimp, worms, whatever you want. But I put skein here and it creates a holster. So my finger is essentially the bait. I'm not flicking you guys off, I promise. And it puts your hook in a nice position, a nice upright position. So when they bite, wham, just straight up into their mouth. And a lot of times they're going to get that perfect upper lip hook set like my fish had in this video. So yeah, guys, that's the rig right here. Super simple. I'll do a couple of those knot tutorials to kind of give you guys a full, full in-depth setup. But this is the rig I used in my video and it stood the test of time and it's been working for me. And this is now what I'm going to be using. So this is kind of an over the top setup, guys. I would definitely make sure that you get a 10 to 20 pound line rated rod. Like I said, you can fish anything from an 8 foot 6 all the way up to a 13. I find 10 and a half to 12 is that happy medium for me. Also, I'll reiterate this one more time. I've started a fishing guide service. If you guys want to do some cool stuff like you saw in this video, I still have some prime dates available. I have people booking with me every single day right now. So shout out to anybody that's supporting my new business. It means a lot to me. I have brand new rods, reels, boats, everything. And I'm excited to get some of you guys on the water. And also this fully custom rod setup right here, this Mags custom rod and brand new Shimano Vanford reel. This is for you to use. These are client rods and this is what people are going to be running on my boat. So I hope you guys enjoyed the video. If you got something to take away from this video, let me know in the comments if you guys have any questions. But if you guys want to help support the video, leave a like, comment, subscribe, and I'm going to be on my upload game this year. So stay tuned for another video. I should have one shortly. And this raft is really going to open up a lot of cool opportunities for content and some cool videos on the road. So hope you guys enjoyed. Hope you guys have a good fall if I don't see you in another one. And until next time, it's been your boy Chiefs. I'm out.