Is anyone having sucess with the silvers in the skagit? I have fished for them several times without much success. I'm hoping someone could give some much needed advice. I have a drift boat and have been fishing the lower river below sedro. I see people catching fish around me but I can't seem to hook-up as often as they are.

I don't fish the Skagit, But if others are catching fish you can also. Usually the technics used by those that catch fish are only slightly different than those used by
people that don't catch many fish. Things such as tuning plugs correctly, using the right size corkie with the right size hook with the right size line,getting a zero drag float with your bobber etc etc

JC
What is meant by getting a zero drag float?

Having been born in sedro I've fished that river quite a bit and when still do (odds are that if your born in woolley you'll probably die there). Anyways for silvers I only fish lures, eggs work but their alot of work. Focus on current seams and rocks/logs/etc, my favorite lure is a silver blue fox size 4. These get a little costly and its easy to loose them so also try dick nites behind 3 feet of pencil led. If it gets slow I'll use a spoon with some green on it and bounce it along the bottom as long as there aren't alot of snags. This works well because silvers, dogs, dollies and steelhead will bite it.

Zero drag float = Natural

In fly fishing for example you want your fly to float down the river with the current, neither faster nor slower and definitely not sideway. Heavily fished resident trout are notorious for ignoring anything unnatural. But there are always exceptions to the rule such as a drowning hopper trying to rescue itself. That is why you sometimes twitch your fly across the current. Same idea with any other lure (Bait, corkie, jig, wet fly, etc). The general idea is to have it flow with the current without it being too obviously slower or faster than current. But as I said earlier there is always exception. For example a lot of time fish hit at the end of your swing when your lure is going side way and up. This is not a natural flow but it has more to do with enhanced visibility (the object is going across the fish field of vision) and the chase instinct (The object is rising and getting away from the fish).

This year has been incredibly frustrating silver fishing for me. Last year I could not miss and this year I’ve had to really work for my fish. The worse part about it is there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of fish. I like to fish the pipe line area but the fish just haven’t been holding in there much at all this year. All season long it seems like around the Gardener’s Road and down river is where all the action has been. So if you’ve been fishing up from there that might be part of your problem, I know its been mine. Now that we’ve finally gotten some really high water it might improve around the pipeline but it won’t be much longer before all the fish will be getting dark. Last year by early November I was catching seven or eight dark fish to one bright one. Anyway, as far as what to cast throw Dick nites…….they love them. Go with the small ones in half-and-half or chrome with a green tail. If you watch what the boaters are using I would guess ninty percent of them use the Dick nite's. They can be deadly.