spoiling chances

[garry4]

what advice would you give that will give more of a chance of a fish and is there a certain way of catching bigger salmon like stocking or am i talking rubbing please help me someone who is full of knowledge and experiance thank you i no ive started stupid threads but its good to be put in the right direction?

[Speyducer]

garry4 said:

what advice would you give that will give more of a chance of a fish and is there a certain way of catching bigger salmon like stocking or am i talking rubbing please help me someone who is full of knowledge and experiance thank you i no ive started stupid threads but its good to be put in the right direction?

I will give two guarantees:

1. You WILL have more chance of catching more fish the longer your flies spend in the water.

2. There is NO certain way of hooking up with or catching the larger salmon, but you can increase those chances quite substantially if you fish in waters which regularly have runs of the larger fish, and that you fish at the ideal time for those fish to take.

Mike

[rpsalmon]

In order to advise on how to give more chance of a fish we would first need to know what you are doing. In terms of catching big fish the only general advice on tactics would be to fish a slightly larger lure more slowly and deeply than normal, but that is such general advice that I wouldn't follow it until you have picked up some basic advice on salmon tactics, principally because those same tactics will most probably mean you catch fewer fish overall! Salmon fishing is a sport of percentages, your tactics should be concentrated toward catching as many fish as possible in order to gain experience. After you have caught a number of fish you will have the basic experience needed to go for big fish, the most practical advice to catch such fish is to fish those rivers where there are higher proportions of big fish.

Having looked at your previous posts and noting you've stated that Ghillies have said you're not doing anything wrong, I would suggest you buy a book to increase your overall knowledge of the fishing and salmon to improve your chances.

As a beginners/practical guide I suggest you either buy a copy of Falkus's "Salmon Fishing" that you could pick up for £10, or Alexander Baird Keachie's "Salmon Fishing:on river and stream" that I have seen for as little as £3.

[ceilidh]

Garry4,
Sound advice above, but you will also gain a great deal of useful advice from reading this Forum, (and not just the beginners advice thread) albeit with a sprinkling of salt, since many of us have fleas in our bonnets about certain subjects!
I think that, if you try to pin your hopes upon catching big fish in this country you will probably end up by being disappointed and miss most of the real joys of salmon fishing. If this is your main aim you should concentrate upon Norway or Russia or try for Taimen in Mongolia!
You might,of course, also try changing your sex,since ladies are famously more successful at luring the leviathons from their lairs!

[rpsalmon]

Depends on what you define as "big".

While I can remember 18Ib/20Ib fish as being average on some rivers, these days I would subjectively class 20Ib to say 28Ib as big. 29Ib-35Ib as very big and 36Ib+ as massive. Sometimes I am delighted to even catch a mere 15Ib fish.