Luhr Jensen's Buzz Ramsey shows the result of fishing with a Salmon Bungee, a tule Chinook taken at the mouth of the Columbia River. Photo by Dusty Routh

"I think the more stuff you put in the water for salmon, the better," shouted Buzz Ramsey, the Northwest's resident legendary salmon and steelhead angler. He was shouting over the noise of the motor on his jet sled boat as he expertly dodged us around other boats, barges, ships, monstrous wakes, and bell buoys on our way out of Astoria toward the mouth of the Columbia River.

Within minutes all four of our rods were out, each pulling a Double Deep Six Diver, a Salmon Bungee, a leader, a bead-chain swivel, and then a mooching leader. Yep, it was a lot of stuff. On two rods, big red/white spinners spun, while on the other two rods plug-cut herring rolled. It was August, the height of the summer Chinook fishery at the mouth of the Columbia. Ramsey adjusted the speed of the kicker motor and settled into his seat to tell me about this new thing called a Salmon Bungee.

We've all seen snubbers, those smallish rubber tubes used mostly for soft-mouthed kokanee and some trout fishing. But the Luhr-Jensen Salmon Bungee is a different animal. Unlike a conventional snubber, the Bungee flexes a lot more. A whole lot more. It's like a big rubber band "It's a bungee action rather than a snubber," says Ramsey, Luhr-Jensen and Son's northwest sales manager. "It's made from the same material, but the internal cord rather than being twice the relaxed length of the surgical tubing, is three times its length. So it flexes a whole lot more."

The idea behind that stretchy flexibility is to allow the fish to mouth the bait without the bait being pulled away, which is the natural propensity when you're trolling. "Think about it," offers Ramsey. "The fish comes up behind the bait, flares his gills and pulls the bait in on a cushion of water. Everything we troll prevents him from doing that, because we're pulling the bait away from the fish. Drop a piece of night crawler into an aquarium, and watch your fish flare his gills and pull it in. But if you're moving that piece of night crawler forward on a string, he'd have a tough time."

The idea for this fascinating new tool originally came from Tillamook, Oregon-based guide Tim Juarez (503-801-0220). "He was out, like everybody, trolling the ocean for coho during the selective fishery south of Cape Falcon," Ramsey recalls. "He was going out there with two to three dozen herring, and running out of bait before he got his limit. That's pretty typical for fishing with herring: lots of bites, but few hookups. So Tim was tearing his hair out, because you can troll a dozen herring out there and only get one fish."

Ramsey says that Juarez figured out that as he was trolling, the fish were trying to get the bait but he was constantly (and unintentionally) pulling it away from them with forward movement. "So he decided he needed something like a snubber, but with a whole lot more flexibility," Ramsey explains. "So he used a piece of surgical tubing with two swivels at each end behind the diver and before the mooching leader, and he really upped his hooking average."

THE PROTOTYPE WORKS
Juarez contacted Luhr-Jensen with his discovery, and the company built some prototypes. Based on the results, both Ramsey and Juarez knew they had a winner. Anglers can now find Salmon Bungees at retail outlets selling for about $4 each.

The Salmon Bungee comes in two different sizes: a light style, with more flexibility that's perfect for coho, and a medium style, which is a little hardier and more appropriate for kings. They come in red, chartreuse and black.

"I sent Tim the red and chartreuse colors at the prototype stage," Ramsey recalls, "and he said, 'Wow! That red one catches coho, but nothing on the chartreuse.' At Buoy 10 (mouth of the Columbia), I hardly caught a Chinook on a red one, but the chartreuse was hot for kings there."