It is that time again when salmon come home to the Sooke River. There are a few springs, a few coho and several thousand extremely large chum going up and then falling with the tide.
At the campground, it is a toonie to enter, although you should take a look before fishing and then be sure of your parking spot.
On a low tide and when the De Mamiel coho are in, it is a good spot, particularly before the rains begin. But not so on a tide of even two metres as the fish move up to the long "pool" below the stairs. On a higher tide, it lifts them to the clay slope pool and then up to Martin's.
You will need a sink-tip floating line, an 8-weight rod, and carry a poly nymph tip to find the fish zone. Do note that if you foul hook a fish, there is good and bad news. The bad news is that you will spend as much as 15 minutes dealing with the fish, which is wasted time and energy on both fish and fisher, most importantly the fish. The good news is that you have found the zone.
You can avoid foul hooking by several methods: circle hooks that simply slide across those fins and bodies, slippery fingers whereby you do not simply strike resistance, but rather select when you have received a snap, and teasing by lifting your rod tip as though nymphing and waiting until, with very small tugs on your part, it is clear that you have a fish by the mouth. Chum are the most clumsy of the five species, and so some hooked around the mouth are actually fish that bit but missed. If you are using brass fresh-water hooks, they are pliable enough to bend the point up toward the shank to imitate a circle hook.
Please do not haul fish out onto the bank to release them. Their slime can be punctured with dust and grit and they can die before spawning. As well, their bodies are only able to support their own weight when suspended in the water.
With 15-pound test leaders, you can "land" them in the water and with pliers retrieve your fly. Chum are very toothy and in their thrashing, particularly as these are very large chum, their long sharp teeth can slice your fingers - use pliers.
The colours that worked the other day were purple, purple/pink, purple/black or white with pink and pink Krystal Flash. Egg-sucking leeches can be good. On other days green can be the colour. Hook size is 2 to 6 on bright days and larger on rainy days. And if you cannot get down to the fish zone, add a fly that has a bead head. The water is so slow that the bead will carry the fly down to the zone.
Do remember to look at the tide tables online. If it is three metres or higher, you will have trouble getting back across the river.
This includes above the clay bank on higher tides. As typical with salmon, rising tides bring fish on their leading edges, and they will sometimes continue past the clay bank pool several hours into the high. Above the silver bridge it is fly-fishing only and deemed to be freshwater. Retention is not allowed.
