by: D.C. Reid photos: Anthony Cheung illustrations: Stephen MacEachern Fit For A King When it comes to conquering chinook salmon, West Coast rigs reign supreme Along the B.C. coast, the big bruiser of choice among salmon anglers is the chinook, the heftiest of the five Pacific salmonids. Weighing 20 to 40 pounds on average, these summer and fall spawners provide sport for roughly 300,000 anglers each year. As with other sportfish, however, success depends on the correct presentation of lures designed to mimic food—and for chinook, the preferred lure is bait.      While chinook salmon typically feed on a diet of herring, anchovies, eulachons, needlefish and squid, their feeding habits vary. As the summer progresses and these large fish lumber toward their natal streams, they become more fussy, preferring to observe and then snap up injured prey.       Injured baitfish have little control over their horizontal stability, and they tend to spiral as they swim along; herring in particular exhibit the behaviour of a quick, jagged swing. That’s why all forms of chinook bait fishing—mooching live herring aside—imitate these strike-eliciting movements. The purpose of bait rigging, after all, is to produce a spiral when the bait is pulled through the water.       As the following guide to the West Coast’s most popular rigs shows, however, there’s much more to successfully baiting the king of salmon than meets the eye. Read more on how to set West Coast rigs: The Prep Work | The Rigs Part 1 | The Rigs Part 2 | Trolling Tips