SLOW RIDE PRODUCES LOTS OF LUCK; TROLLING BOATS MORE SALMON.

Byline: BRETT PAULY Angling

You can call trolling for salmon from a party boat Armstrong angling. It's like driving without power steering: Your arms get real tired real fast.

Fishing doesn't get much tougher than holding onto a rod that is pulling a 3-pound sinker. And it can be terribly expensive . . . and terribly boring.

But if you want to increase your odds of putting a chinook on the deck, nothing is easier or more productive in Southern California, which, in most years, is not known as a mecca for salmon.

``You don't have to have any kind of special skills, like knowing how to fly-line a live bait or knowing when you're bit,'' said Erin Powers of Ojai, skipper of the Lenbrooke out of Ventura Harbor's Capt. Hook's Sportfishing.

``Everything is done for you. Basically all you have to do is get your sinker down; the fish sets itself, and you just reel it in. So a guy who doesn't go fishing very often has a chance just as much as a guy who does.''

The technique involves dragging sardines and lures below a slow-moving vessel with 3-pound ``cannonballs'' to bring the bait to the fish.

It paid off Saturday for Agoura Hills angler Jim Hervieux, who boated a 9-plus-pound chinook, or king salmon, on a squid-pattern lure tied behind a green and silver flasher.

He said the strike was not entirely obvious. The pull of the fish releases the sinker and the weak-fighting salmon is automatically hooked and floats quickly to the surface. The drag of fish on the line creates a wavering sensation in the rod, signaling a strike.

``It just starts pulsating,'' said Hervieux, one of three anglers out of 14 to catch a salmon on the day and the only one to reel in a salmon caught on the troll. ``He fought a little bit when it got close to the boat because it wanted to turn and run. But there really wasn't much to it.''

Powers has experimented this season with trolling.

The practice is common on private crafts, as well as party boats in Northern California, where chillier temperatures draw cold-water-adoring salmon and anglers who routinely bring home two-fish limits.

But trolling is practically unheard of on charter vessels in tepid Southland seas, where anglers feel limited success is not worth the cost of losing $5 sinkers - as many as four or more in an afternoon - and the workout of holding a heavy outfit for hours on end.

Most charter captains here prefer mooching, in which live bait is tossed overboard with a -1/4-ounce to 2-ounce sliding sinker - a maneuver known as fly-lining - to bring the salmon to the boat.

However, for a while Powers silenced his critics when he first started trolling in April. On its maiden trolling voyage, the Lenbrooke came back to port with 17 chinook for 12 anglers. On subsequent days, eight anglers came home with eight fish and nine anglers with nine, much better than the typical three-fish-for-10-anglers counts being posted earlier while mooching.

``We got tired of having the little private boats that were trolling around us being so much more productive,'' said Lenbrooke deckhand Jamie Nichols of Isla Vista. ``The passengers would be looking at all these salmon being boated and we figured, `Why not just try it?' ''

The idea is when many salmon aren't biting, trolling can cover more ground to locate those that are.

So, here is the long and short of trolling for salmon from a party boat in Southern California: The good news is it works. The bad news is despite a few hot bites in April and early May, salmon fishing here is petering out due to the impending summer's warming waters, as evidenced by Saturday's three fish for 14 anglers.

But that's good enough for Powers, who promises to try trolling again when salmon season opens in March 1999. And he's won some followers.

``I'd come back and try it again,'' said Tony Randazzo of La Crescenta, who caught one salmon Saturday but was luckless trolling. ``It was fun.''

And isn't that what fishing's supposed to be all about?

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Photo: (Color) Agoura Hills' Jim Hervieux displays one of two 9-plus-pound salmon he caught after trolling a sardine, flasher and 3-pound releasable sinker.

Brett Pauly/Daily News