SALMON'S MOOCHING LODGE

No. At Legacy Lodge, a major part of the satisfaction comes from the clients doing all those things themselves. You are in control of your destiny, though not left totally to your own devices. The freedom you are given comes with first class equipment, tutoring on safety and techniques, and ongoing support on the water.

Paul Cain and Gordon Parks' sole duties during our days on the water are to mother Legacy's little brood of "ducklings." They go from boat to boat and answer questions such as, is my herring spinning right? Am I going too fast? Too slow? Too shallow? Too deep?

And, rarely, "Help, I'm lost!"

You might be the only boat in sight - this is, after all, BIG water, but you are only a VHF radio call away. Heath and right hand man Ryan McLaren are also on the water every day.

After we get settled in our rooms, comfy and sheathed in the rustic woods hewn from the forest that envelops us, we return to the dock for an orientation session and tutoring in the fine art of traditional motor mooching with cut plug herring.

It's an art worth learning, and one that will be practiced on 171/2 -foot Sea Scouts assigned to each pair of anglers. These are custom-built center consoles equipped with marine radios, fish finders, maps, and emergency equipment.

The fishing technique practiced at Legacy Lodge melds the traditional with the contemporary, and the technique of motor mooching with cut plug herring harkens back to the earliest days of sportfishing for salmon in the salt. It is as deadly productive, and far more fun, as any outing with downriggers.

While motor mooching with cut plug herring is conceptually simple, this aphorism by famed architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe was never more apropos: "The devil is in the details."

I've trolled hoochies on downriggers and on three-pound quick-release drop weights, drifted anchovy chunks on banana weights, back-trolled sardine-wrapped Kwikfish, backbounced and boondoggled roe, and even caught kings in brackish tide water on a 10-weight fly rod with lies I've tied myself. But none of my salmon fishing experiences match the nuances of motor mooching for salmon with cut plug herring.

The rods we are using are 101/2–foot fly type rods, whippy in the tip, but strongly backboned. The reels are essentially oversized single action, double-handled fly reels. The rods are equivalent roughly to a nine-weight rod. Want to go even sportier? Just ask, and Heath is happy to fix you up with a seven-weight rod. The prospect of tangling with, and landing, a 50-pound spring on the lighter gear (it's been done), reminds me of the famous Clint Eastwood line, "Do you feel lucky - well, do ya?"

The reels have adjustable drags, but we are taught that it is best if we rely on applying the pressure on the edge of the revolving spool (palming it) rather than depending totally on the drag. It's a lesson easy to forget, however, and he inexperienced among us, and even the supposedly experienced - me - soon find out why they are dubbed "knucklebusters."

Learning the basics of rigging the hooks on a cut plug herring is only part of the process, and not even the first part. You first have to determine on what angle to make the cut. Cut it on a somewhat blunt angle down and across, and the herring will make the big, lazy twirls that are preferred by Chinook. Targeting coho? Make a more acutely angled cut, up to 45 degrees across and down, and center the insertion of the front hook in the center of meat at the top of the cut to get the tighter spin they prefer. The more streamlined shape also stands up better to the higher trolling speeds used for coho.

That's only the first lesson. There's more, lots more, to learn. How far should the baits be dropped back behind the boat? The fish might be shallow, or they might be deep. We caught several coho as the herring skittered at the surface in our wake, while 16 to 20 pulls might be necessary later on, especially when the sun is shining as brightly as it did much of the time we were there. Speeding up and slowing down, occasionally taking the engine out of gear, and making big zigzags, are also effective tactics.

Deciding where to go each day also presents challenges, and every morning would begin with a strategy session to decide what to target and where to fish. The choices are many and scattered over miles of watery real estate. Some of the spots, like the Wall, are renowned among salmon fishermen and you are likely to see other boats since they are frequented by boats from the few other lodges.

But there is no need to be in the sight of boats other than those from the Legacy Lodge fleet, because Heath and his team have found plenty of their own salmon mother lodes. The folks at Legacy have even come up with their own code names to use to call us into hot bites over the radio.

Once the cut plug herring is rigged with twin barbless hooks properly inserted, it's dropped back the chosen distance and the rod is placed in the rod holder. Strikes are handled differently depending on the fish.