FLOAT FISHING for ATLANTIC SALMON!

Dude, dude, oh my gosh. Yo, what is going on guys? Chiefs here, and today we are gonna be float fishing for Atlantic salmon. I'm gonna be joined today by my good buddy Jack and his beautiful 14 foot StarCraft. We're gonna be using a slip float, fishing deep, drifting very teeny flies. I'll show you guys how to set it up towards the end of this, but I think we got Jack coming down to boat launch right now. It's time to kick this off. ♪ They want to screw and I'm just looking for the truth. ♪ ♪ And my chrome die bottom while I swipe. ♪ ♪ Swerving like the lights. ♪ Which one do you want to latch on to? This one? The distance looks perfect. Let's try to get us right in the seam where it's chilling. Oh, there's one, there's one, there's one, there's one. Oh, it's a white fish. Are you kidding me? That's a big old white fish. It's okay. I'd be more upset if that was an Atlantic. I just caught a couple of white fish in Canada, so I got my little fix of that, but nerves are high, adrenaline's pumping. Keep this trend alive. That's a big one. Let's not forget your first ever Atlantic was a dog last year. Is it bigger? I didn't set the hook on that, Scott did. No, dude, I think this one's fatter. That's a nice fish. Lift, lift, lift, lift. That's a dog, that's a dog, that's a dog, that's a dog. Absolutely all day. Wow. Dude, when he jumped, I was like, okay, pull. I seen him come up, I seen that freaking head turn, and I was like, oh yeah, that's it. We decided to pull it a little bit earlier today. We got a pretty large storm front right behind me rolling in. There's been some booming lightning. We thought it was best to get out of there, so. We're gonna cut these fish up, probably have a nice little fish fry if we don't get completely rained out, and we got a good feeling heading into tomorrow. Hopefully I can get a couple in the boat. Jack's just gotta stay on pace, and he's already doing great things, so. Yeah, there's no way that's not 10. Like, the constant this electric knife makes in my car, a lot of fish, you're slamming, you're just knocking, and it's got flex, that's the thing, it's got a nice flex to it. Are you ready for this? Look at how, like. Oh, but you are a knife, bro. You seem to be a pretty good knife. Jack, we need a quick day one evaluation real quick here. So, long story short, our anchor system fell into the water. Very spontaneously, after sitting there for probably two hours. Right, just randomly fell in the water, and we were already thinking about getting out and heading back, and it's time to go, that's a sign. And I mean, we probably got off the water within five minutes. I mean, if we got off the water five to 10 minutes later, we would have probably been taking the boat out in this right now. Day number two. I know for a fact that I didn't use that many bobber sobs yesterday. I got some. As you guys can see right here, the bugs that we have been fishing are pretty much hex and caddis, and this resembles closely what we have been fishing underneath our floats. So you can see this thing is alive. Looks like there may have been some hatches overnight. That should be the ticket right there, if we can match that. All right, I ain't no hooker, but it's nice the way it just locks right into that little groove. Gone bricks on now. Yeah. I know, but I'm just getting impatient right now, that's all. I know, I just be getting impatient now, that's all. Yeah, buddy. This thing is anchored to the bottom. What do you have on? Copper John and a Copper Tom. What colors? I actually have a pretty fat hex on right now, and then I got a black, just regular Copper John. Haven't seen this thing yet, dude. I definitely think this might be a good fish. It looks big. Got me shaking in my boots right now. It's straight under the boat, it's definitely a large fish. Yeah, it's gotta be snagged, there's no way, dude. No? Oh my God. Oh, it's in the tail, it's in the adipose and the mouth, and it's a big fish. Oh my goodness, dude, it's in both. Oh my God. It was in the mouth and it's adipose fin, dude. I'm not kidding. Rocket, that dorsal fin is so sick. Oh my goodness. Beautiful freaking Atlantic. The redemption tour is starting off a little stronger today. I'm letting it go, dude. Do you see it? I haven't seen anything. Staying down pretty good. Jeez. I thought you said you're a vertical content creator. Hey, John, you want to like move your shirt? Oh my God, that's a really big Atlantic. That's a big fish. I mean, it's not, you're good, you're good. No. Yeah, you're good. No. This is for sure my biggest. That's a big fish, I just seen it. It's kicking good, man. It's a nice one. I don't know how. Goodbye. That's a big fish. Please, please, please, please. Yes. Is it that big? Yeah. That's your biggest. Yeah, that's my biggest. That's a dog. This is the one I've been grinding for the last two days, guys. Wind is ripping out of the north. Hasn't laid down one bit. And the patience has been rewarded. We are finally on the biggest one of the trip so far. And the night is very young. Whoa. Hell yeah. All right, so really quickly, I'm gonna give you guys a brief overview of the setup that I got going on here. Starting with the rod, we have a Fenwick HMX. It is a nine foot six medium light fast action rod. And we're gonna have that paired with a Shimano Vanford 3000, which is spooled up with 40 pound braid. No reason why I'm running super heavy braid right now. I'm just being lazy. This was my steelhead setup and it's coming up with salmon season. I don't really feel like changing it out. But some people prefer mono. You can use lighter braid. I like this heavier stuff right here. Down to the main rig, it is kind of weird. It is a setup that takes a second to get down, especially with your knots. There's several knots involved with this. It is quite complicated, but if you can get it down, you'll catch on real quick. So starting up top, we have the 40 pound braid. That is Alberto knotted to about 10 feet of 10 pound monofilament. That's gonna be coming down about a foot to your two bobber stops right here. I like using two because you're really gonna start beating up on your gear, casting at this hydro dam all day. The ideal depth I like to have from the bottom of my sinker all the way to my bobber stops right here is gonna be around six to 12 feet. The fish vary in the water column. Sometimes they're hitting them up top. Sometimes midday when it's super sunny and they're sitting down low, you gotta go a little bit deeper. So from the bobber stops, I'd say it's very imperative that you run this little bead right here. This is what comes with your slip floats. It's very important because if you don't run this, your slip float is gonna slide all the way through your knot and you're just gonna be completely slack line the whole time. I'm actually using a styrofoam float. This is an arrow float right here. Three eighth ounce or half ounce is most ideal. You can use balsa floats as well, but I find after you cast at the concrete all day, you'll start chipping them to pieces and it just doesn't track right. So these styrofoam floats, they work great. They don't bust, even though this bottom stem actually came off. This was actually after four days of fishing. So very durable floats. I'd recommend the styrofoam. We got a nice barrel swivel right here. And this is where things actually start to get kind of tricky because you basically just have the simple flip float rig for a deeper kind of hole. But right here, we've got about three, three and a half foot of 12 pound fluorocarbon. And the thing that makes it kind of weird is that I have two dropper loop knots here. And this was a knot that I was unfamiliar with before I started fishing here. You got two dropper loop knots evenly spaced out. So one foot down, we have our first fly. Another foot down, we have our second fly. And another foot down, we've got our bell sinker here, which is matching the weight of our float. So I have a half ounce weight right here. This used to be a bell sinker. You can use pencil lead, you can make your own lead. I like it just above a half ounce. It seems like a half ounce bell sinker with a split shot, my float's sitting at a nice level where it's nice and buoyant because the bites are typically really sensitive. I like to ride my float a little bit lower. So off these dropper loop knots, we've got about seven to eight inches, I'd say, down to our flies. And our fly sizes are gonna be anywhere from 10 to 14. You can go down to a 16 if you really want to, but 10 to 14 seems to be ideal. People are using caddises, copper Johns, Prince Nymphs, you name it. Throw it out there, switch around your colors. There's no super hot color or anything, I'd say. People are getting them on everything. You'll get reports from people and they're all over the place. So as far as tips go, switch your tubes around, hop around if there's open spaces, kind of fill that gap, make sure that there's good flow pushing through it. I don't know what's going on at that power dam or whatever, but they basically shut tubes on and off all day. And some days you'll go back to the same tube and there's no flow kicking out of it. And then another day there's bubbles flying everywhere. And sometimes you can actually see the fish in there. I liked riding my float a little bit lower because the bites are very sensitive. A lot of times that I noticed bites, my floats weren't even going all the way down. It was like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick on the surface. Set the hook, the hook sets free. And a lot of times you'll come up with a fish. Next thing, switch your flies around. And as far as the last one, I mean, play with your depth. Those fish were sitting from six to 12 feet. They could be anywhere. Sometimes you're hitting them high. Sometimes you're hitting them down low. But that's what I got for you guys. This is the basic breakdown. I hope you enjoyed the first salmon fishing video of the year, actually. Atlantic salmon, switching it up with something different. Hope you guys enjoy this. I'm excited to start recording some king fishing videos here soon and some summer steelhead. I'm actually on my way to my very first salmon tournament right now, which will be in another video coming up. And this should be the start of king season for me. So I hope you guys enjoy. If you're new to the channel, leave a like, comment, subscribe, all that good stuff. And until next time, I'll see you in the next one. It's your boy, Chiefs. Peace.