Sk8man

I stopped using snubbers back in the early 80's. The reason: lost fish from poor hookups. I gave things some thought and concluded that by leaving my drag fairly loose and with the stretch inherent in the mono along with the stretch of the snubber along with the forward momentum of the fish was leading to the poor hookups. That was before fluoro too I should note. I got rid of the snubbers and began setting my drag tighter to the point that it takes a fairly good tug to activate the clicker. Again, this was in the world of mono lines and leaders and my results improved dramatically. Wire fishing is a different "animal" in terms of the stretch issue but the same approach has worked well. The main thing to remember not only with salmon but fishing in general is that the line between you and the fish needs tension on it at all possible times and is pretty much the only thing between success and failure and any slack can lead to failure so the drag setting is critical.....not enough and slack can occur and too much can risk break offs (as well as poor knots and unseen line abrasions). If your drag is set properly (i.e. tight enough) the weight of the fish on the sharp hook should supply enough pressure for a good hookup providing the fish actually has the hook in his mouth keeping in mind that as the season rolls on the mature salmons mouth hardens so a little more pressure may be required for a good hookup and again sharp hooks are often assumed and not carefully examined and corrected. The combination of hook sharpness and proper drag setting are the most critical aspects and keeping firm pressure not allowing slack when bringing in will bring success. A factor not always considered in the so-called "poor hookups" is that the salmon (or other fish) may not actually have the hook itself in its mouth and instead has accidentally grabbed the line or spoon or front part of the fly or that on downriggers in particular the inherent slack created initially as the line releases the fish shortly drops whatever part he has in his mouth. I'm sure this isn't news for a lot of folks but thought it is worth mentioning for new folks to the scene

Look at it this way Dave....there are a lot of people out there that have never caught a king let alone a thirty pounder

WTG Dave. a case of perseverance paying off. You put your time in and and dialed it in. Good going.

You guys must have caught them all on those small to medium spoons

Roughly 2 5/8 through 4 inches works well on the Finger Lakes. Can you catch fish on magnums? sure... but not as frequently.

Probably not a great idea to get into here and maybe especially this year. One of the great things about this site for me is that there is usually little drama and things are more about sharing ideas and learning than getting into issues that often lead to conflict by their very nature (e.g. like politics and religion etc.). My vote is to keep it focused on fishing stuff that we all have a vested interested in.

Ditto

Sounds as though there is something sharp or abrasive somewhere in the take up path that is severing and/or abrading the strands since it isn't occurring in just one spot toward the end of the cable which would in that case indicate possibly fast retrieval rate of a heavy weight with "jerking" going on severing strands near the termination where the stress would be greatest.. I'd do a real careful check of everything you can in the wire path (maybe with a magnifying glass?) Probably wouldn't take much of a rough edge somewhere with that type of pressure on it.

A few basic things to consider are: are you fishing solo or with others (netting) and how good are you at hand lining chinooks to the net? Unless using something like a sliding dipsey there are realistic functional limits to the length of the leader because when you get the fish near the boat and try to net it you may have a problem if it is too long and your boat becomes too short to back up to the front so someone else can net it OR you are by yourself and the dipsey reaches the tip of your rod with several feet of leader still out with a fiesty chinook on the other end and you are into a one hand netting situation If desiring long leads on your setup consider using a slider dipsey and for usual dipseys use the length of your rod as a guide to the total length of your setup that way you'll be in netting range most of the time. If you have a lot of experience hand lining fish you may choose to go over the limit but chinooks are a handful at the boat and are often unlike some other more sedate fish and when they see the boat or the net expect the unexpected