questions for bluekayak.

Jmairey and Blue,
Thanks a mil for your answers, I am going to study them carefully so I can get ready for when the season opens. Pretty exciting stuff!
btw, I am really happy to have joined this board. People are top notch and super helpful!
Thanks,
Alain

There is one thing kind of mysterious about salmon, because they're same density as salt h2o they don't show on fishfinders, I like that about them. There are a couple of people on coastside claiming they can dial their ff's in to spot them, if that's true it's too bad. I always liked the idea that the fish had a sporting chance in the game

Blue,  it's the salmon's air bladder that would show up on a FF, right?

-Allen

It's only been general fishing type info so far, the stuff that any hardened fisherman that got
to learn from his own parents would already know. I wouldn't feel like too much of a traitor! 

I don't know how that shit works but salmon don't have air bladders, the marine biolgists out there can correct me if I'm wrong about that.  Whatever it is that keeps them off the sonar it's good.

I'm only a marine-biologist-wanna-be, but I'm pretty certain salmon have air bladders.

-Allen

If they have a swim bladder, it isn't much of one or we'd be limited to 120' on salmon as well as rockfish.  It seems to me they maintain their depth hydrodynamically instead of hydrostatically.

A guy on coastside posted pics from a high-end sonar that he'd tuned to detect salmon.  The salmon swooped around, moving up and down by about 50' before hitting his bait.  I don't think that's something a fish with an air bladder would do.

A quick Google search confirms my beliefs that salmon have swim bladders.  Salmon have the abiity to regulate the air in the bladder ("burp" if you will).  Rockfish do NOT.  Come on bsteves, put that baby down a sec and back me here!!!   

-Allen

Hey blueyak question, what problems could you see from a guy putting two lines down, one with weight and the other to your pole like the commercial guys due. other than tangle issues   Oh, one favor first, if you don't want to help a guy with a FF don't LIE just say PASS thanks, 

A quick Google search confirms my beliefs that salmon have swim bladders.  Salmon have the abiity to regulate the air in the bladder ("burp" if you will).  Rockfish do NOT.  Come on bsteves, put that baby down a sec and back me here!!!   

-Allen

Allen,

You are indeed correct salmon have swimbladders, but they are fundemnetally different than rockfish swimbladders.

Primative fishes (like salmon, herrings, catfishes, eels...) have a duct between their airbladder and their gut and can effectively 'burb' their own air bladders.  We refer to these fish as having "physostomous" air bladders.  Note that although these fish can 'burp' their bladders they consequentially have to come to the surface to 'gulp' air to fill them.  Salmon are often fairly shallow and don't require much air anyway so their swimbladders are relatively small.  P_sparks comment about hydrodynamic stability has some merit here, but they do in fact have swim bladders.

Rockfishes and more derived fish forms have closed air bladders and rely on physiological gas exchange to inflate or deflate their bladders.  These fish have a "physoclistous" swimbladder.  For rockfish this is beneficial because they can adjust their swimbladders over time at any depth with out having to come to the surface to get air.  However, we all know what happens if we yank them to the surface unwillingly.

Okay, back to the baby...


Brian

Bsteves and allen, thanks for the salmon anatomy sidebar, it's great to have experts around.

Blue, when I asked for 'locale specific guidance', I guess I just figured you started
fishing at a certain depth in one area, and different depths in other areas and that's
what I was after, not like "I caught fish @ latitude X and longitude Y and depth Z", but I can see how
that might not have been clear.

Anybody with a fishin' grandma has got a leg up over me, but I won't argue that point.
As for insults, good luck finding somebody with a thicker, more flame-proof hide than
mine.  . Nobody in my life cares whether I get skunked or catch a world record,
my status in life stays the same either way, so it's hard for me to get too concerned about what
people think about my fishing performance. The only person that cares is me.

I have very rarely enjoyed being in a tackle store, and I just innately distrust salesguys so
I'd say it's a pleasure instead to be insulted and taught by crusty old salmon fishermen like yourself,
and young guys like stu and travis and art that know way too much about fishing perhaps for
their own good.

But basically I think I'm more or less ready for the season now, I just need to practice on the
lakes for trout as much as I can between now and the opening of the season. Next winter
I'll adjust based on what I learned this upcoming summer and hopefully I'll be reasonably competent before I'm
too old to fish.

I burp a lot so I must be physostomous

maybe that's why I feel such an affinity for the salmon

So bsteves why are salmon invisible on the ffs? I was always under the impression it was because they were the same density as salt h2o. In a way I liked not knowing, it gave them a bit more mystique




99% of the stuff in the tackle stores is pointless but then so is a lot of the stuff people are doing to kayaks in order to catch fish. But a few of the guys working in the shops know what they're talking about, and it's worth just shooting the s--t with some of them just for the entertainment value

.

if you're going to troll salmon from your kayak just stick to a rod holder and keep it simple.

Yeah, that makes good sense.

So all this trolling, do you think it really helps that much when it's a slow bite or are you just the fidgety type.

As far as Salmon not showing on FF's it would have more to do with the shape of there backs. If the top of the fish is slightly rounded the radar will bounce back, if the back comes to a point then the sound wave just gets split up but sends nothing back to the FF.

That's my best guess.

P.S. I might not even tell my own father where my steelhead hole was   

As one of the people in the tackle stores I find your contrasting viewpoints intersting.  I do occasionally run into people who distrust me because I am a salesman.  I usually try to sell people what they ask for it I know of something that works better I will make that suggestion but the bottom line is I want you to catch fish and come back.  If you go into any tackle store with that in mind you can get what you need.  Tell the sales person exactly what you want to do and you can usually something that will do it.  If you have a price range tell them that.

Salmon will show up on your fishfinder to some extent.  Because they have a softer body and smaller scales than rockfish they don't show as well as rockfish.  The signal will be smaller for there size.  They are most often recognisable in bait balls as dark slashes.  If a hoked salmon runs under your kayak and your transducer it will show up on your fishfinder if you watch it.