92 ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL AUGUST 2019 | aksportingjournal.com
and keeping track of your presentation
easy, especially when in poor lighting
conditions. A uni-knot joins the braid
to a 15-pound P-Line CXX Xtra Strong
leader, which should be 2 to 3 feet long.
The thin braid allows the lightweight
Mag Lip to be cast far.
When fishing with a floating plug
like the Mag Lip from shore, you’re
casting into deeper water and retriev-
ing it into shallow water. This means
as soon as the plug hits the water, reel
fast to get it diving. Don’t reel so fast
that the plug dredges the bottom and
gets hung up, rather just fast enough
to get the current working with you
to keep the plug down. If you reel too
fast the plug will bounce off the bot-
tom, so slow down. If the line is too
slack, reel a bit faster and point your
rod tip upstream. The Mag Lip will
dive deeper into the strike zone.
As the plug gets closer to shore, the
water gets more shallow. This means
you’ll need to reel slower in order to
keep the plug off the bottom. Raising
your rod tip as you slow the reel also
helps the plug ride higher as it ap-
proaches you in shallow water.
When casting upstream into a cur-
rent, you can regulate how quickly a
plug dives by how fast you reel, as well
as how low to the water and how far
upstream you hold your rod tip. Reeling
fast with the rod tip pointed upstream
and nearly hitting the water will result
in the plug sinking faster than if the
tip of the rod was held waist-high and
pointed directly in front of you.
The more you fish plugs, the more
efficient you’ll become at feeling and
seeing how they react to current flow,
water depth, and different retrieve
rates. Once you get the presentation
down, you’ll be surprised how easy it is
to master, and how effective it is when it
comes to catching more coho. ASJEditorn’s note: Signed copies of Scott
Haugen’s popular book, Bank Fishing For
Salmon & Steelhead, can be obtained by
sending $15 to Haugen Enterprises, P.O.
Box 275, Walterville, OR 97489, or from
scotthaugen.com. Follow Scott on Insta-
gram, Facebook and Twitter.FIELD
Haugen, who has been fishing remote waters throughout
Alaska for 29 years, loves casting plugs for coho. He
took this limit of fresh silvers from the Egegik River last
August. (SCOTT HAUGEN)