Special Feature:

The Man They Call “Mr. Salmon”
How to catch more fish—any where!

By Butch Moore

Sewn bait.” Just saying it evokes a multitude of responses, from the grimace of a die-hard fly-fishing-only activist to the grin of someone who’s fished this way before. One such person is the guy on Rangeley Lake known as “Mr. Salmon,” AKA Dennis Bolduc of Oakland, ME. One look at the fish he catches and you’ll know how he earned this title.

Though he’s a die-hard now, Dennis got a slow start on fishing early in life. He comes from a family that doesn’t fish, but as luck would have it, one of his neighbors did, and Dennis was able to tag along as a youngster. He loved being out on the water trolling, even way back then. Now that he’s older, Dennis frequently takes other young anglers out, giving them the same chance to learn what he was given many years ago.

Starting out with streamer flies, lures, and other types of bait, Dennis finally settled in on using sewn bait. Unlike most anglers, Dennis catches all of his own bait, usually while the ice is still on the lakes. He goes out at night with a light, cuts a hole in the ice, and then sets his net. Later on, he pulls in his catch and stores it.

For his boat setup, Dennis uses Eagle Claw 9-foot Starfire medium action rods, with an extended butt for trolling. He says, “I’ve tried a lot of different rods through the years and have found these Starfire rods are the best for letting fish make runs away from the boat. It’s a lot of fun.” Next, he does something different—he uses fly reels on spinning rods, with his reel of choice being the Pflueger Medalist. Dennis says, “The RC stands for rim control. That way when a fish is peeling out line, you can use your palm on the side of the reel to give some control.”

Setting Up

Dennis starts with 100 yards of braided nylon for backing, and then uses 10 colors of 18-pound lead-core line. After this, he uses a 30-foot fluorocarbon (10-pound) leader attached directly to the lead-core line. You can do this with either a blood knot or nail knot, whichever you prefer. Next, he adds a stainless steel ball bearing swivel size 1/0, saying, “Anything smaller and they will try to go through or get caught in the first eyelet at the end of your rod.” He then attaches an 8-foot long, 8-pound test fluorocarbon leader to the stainless steel swivel. He says, “The idea is, if you get caught up on bottom, you only lose those the 8-foot section instead of the 30-foot section. It’s a money saver thing.” At the end of the 8-foot leader, Dennis I ties on a tiny black “snap.” He says, “That’s to make it easy to attach and detach my sewn smelt.” Speaking of smelts, Dennis adds, “That’s all I troll with is sewn smelts. It catches all species of fish here in Maine.”

Dennis uses two of his four rods as the outside rods on each side of the boat. The other two are used in the “slipstreams” directly behind the boat. On the slipstream rods he uses a Martin 3 to 1 ratio “Multiplier” reel. He puts fifty yards of braided nylon for backing, and then adds fifty yards of Cortland 333+ salmon trolling sinking fly line (L 8 S). “I like using the Martin multipliers because they are quick to reel in when one of the outside rods goes off. Plus these rods are very active just after ice-out because the fish are so close to the surface.” He adds, “I like my set-up because sometimes the two rods on the outside are hot and sometimes the two sinking fly line rods are hot. And sometimes all four rods are hot. It gives me a good variety while fishing.”

Good Looking Smelt

What’s Dennis’ secret for making his bait look good? Just after ice out, he uses the “slow roll” approach. The slow roll mimics wounded fish going through the water after a salmon went through and hit a bunch of them, especially after ice out. “A salmon may go through a school of smelts, chomping them up as much as they can. Then they comes back and hit the week ones,” he said. The ones that are wounded tend to be too weak to swim right, rolling through the water. “If you can mimic that slow roll right after ice out it’s very effective as that’s when the salmon are gorging themselves on smelts,” he says.

For this setup, Dennis uses the hook itself as a needle. “I place the shank of the hook up against the fish’s mouth perpendicular to the mouth. Wherever the point touches is where I go through the first time, usually right behind the eye. The next time, I put it just in front of it, making one right behind the eye and one right in front.” He then he moves to the side, going through that twice as well. He starts just behind the gill plate, saying, “It’s important to put the hook just through the skin, not through the meat because you want the hook to act as a counterweight to make that slow roll.” The second insertion follows along the lateral line of the fish, going the full length of the shank, starting about halfway up the fish. “Then you tighten everything up, leaving a slight bend in the fish.” Dennis also says it’s crucial to troll this setup at 0.5 to 0.6 miles per hour to get the right action.

The other method he uses, three weeks or so after ice out and through the rest of the season, is the “wobble” effect, much like you see a store bought lure doing. Of the wobble, Dennis says, “The fish is swimming straight, and then goes on his side for just a second, saying ‘I’m okay…no I’m not…I’m okay…no I’m not.’ It’s that kind of action that triggers the fish to bite

To set up for the wobble, Dennis uses a sewing needle and comes “up through the butt of the fish and out the mouth. Then you come up through the jaw twice, once through one nostril and then the other.” Then he cinches it up with a small bend in the bait and he’s all set.

Dennis practices catch and release almost exclusively. He says most all of his fish are caught right in the corner of the mouth, much like you would find when fishing with artificial lures or flies. He kept records of his catches for five years straight on Rangeley Lake, and figures 95 percent of his salmon were hooked that way, making his methods comparable to non-bait fishing, but much more effective. “I remember in my streamer fly days, I had them hit it so hard that they swallowed that too,” he said, though he says it didn’t happen often. He credits his low hooking mortality to the active trolling he does, which of course is different than drifting worms on a bobber.

“My favorite fish are the ones who stay deep all the way to the boat, and then about eight feet away, maybe ten, they’ll make their first leap right behind, and every time, just like when I was a kid, I’ll say ‘WOW!’ It’s just like candy at Easter.”

Butch Moore is the administrator of the New England Outdoor Voice website.