09-24 REELLIFE digital - Flipbook - Page 9
one of the best anglers on
the river. But sometimes
that’s not enough.
The bite was over when we
dropped our baits.
With us, on Josh's 26-foot
Motion Marine Fishing
Machine were two camera
operators and a sound
technician. A camera boat
trailed in our wake with
the director and additional
camera operators. A drone
operator and his team
staged on the Washington
side of the river near
the mouth of the White
Salmon. The bodyguard
stayed on the beach.
Zimmern is no stranger
to a fishing rod, but he
hadn't fished for Columbia
chinook before. We showed
him the baits, hoping he
wouldn't gobble them or
try to get us to eat them.
We call this hover-fishing
when the fish stack two
feet off the bottom and we
drift our baits into a biomass of salmon, as dragfree as possible.
I looped a cluster of cured
salmon roe and a sand
shrimp tail on a bloodred Daiichi hook. We
drizzled Pro-Cure Tuna on
the potpourri in case our
prospective salmon had
cultivated palates.
To hover-fish, the procedure
is to start at the top of
holding water and run
the boat a bit slower than
the top currents, the baits
"hovering" off the bottom.
Zimmern's rod had a Daiwa
line-counter. Without digital
advantage, I dropped
the lead weight to the
