2016 Alberni Inlet

Any updated reports on the sockeye fishing? Talked to a buddy yesterday who has fished yesterday for 6 hours and not a single bite and from what he said did not see very many nets flying.
 
Lots of goose eggs at the ramp earlier in the week. Large numbers of fish have moved up river, combined with heavy seine and gill net activity -- may need to wait for some hot sunny weather to move another bunch of fish from outside into the inlet. Fishing was quite slow for me earlier in the week and there were a lot of skunks at the ramp.
 
Today I had the pleasure of taking a buddy from the LML out.
We had 1 to the surface and that was it for 5 hours of fishing.
Right beside us another buddy was slaying them. We had the same gear, speed, depths, etc.
It was so bad that we rafted and LML buddy went on the other boat - then got his 4 in no time with them!!!!!
Humiliation but at least my LML buddy got to see fish!

I am quite successful with this fishery but some days I can't do anything right. A pal who guides says that you can easily go from hero to zero when fishing

Overall it was better than slow but not many were limiting.

Back at it tomorrow.
 
Nice to hear your buddy got some fish olde school. We heard you guys talking about rafting. We got skunked today too and was a little disappointed. Others were definitely catching. We only fished 2 rods and no dummies because it was just me and my boy. He actually handled the riggers great so I think we're ready to make it a little more challenging. We fished real small pink squirts with 24" - 28" leaders at 1.8 mph. I might try a little larger mp15 on Sunday. Any tips as to what else I'm doing wrong?
 
Brian Reiber said:
Nice to hear your buddy got some fish olde school. We heard you guys talking about rafting. We got skunked today too and was a little disappointed. Others were definitely catching. We only fished 2 rods and no dummies because it was just me and my boy. He actually handled the riggers great so I think we're ready to make it a little more challenging. We fished real small pink squirts with 24" - 28" leaders at 1.8 mph. I might try a little larger mp15 on Sunday. Any tips as to what else I'm doing wrong?
Click to expand...

Sockeye fishing is so funny in that the bite will follow a boat and stay with it and the bite will shun another boat appearing to do all the same things. I'll just share what worked for us when we were up there. We had our success with short leaders- 20-22" including swivels, black hooks- tadem 5/0 or single 6/0 (hook colour and speed might be the biggest 2 factors from what I've read on here), mini-pink skirts, mini pink and purple, mini pink with black stripes all worked for us, the basic green and orange flashers both worked well, super gold betsy did not, tried it a couple of times just to see. 2.2 MPH was our money speed. Slower than 2MPH didn't work for us, although the inside rod sometimes hit on a turn. More often that not though for a turn it was the outside one that sped up that produced. 40-50ft showing on the rigger, rigger set at 45 seemed to work best. Ran a dummy each side off the ball, it ran maybe 3' back from ball. 8-10' up from that ran a rod clipped pretty close to the rigger line. 8-10' up another rod clipped close to the rigger. All in all had 6 flashers down there, 2 dummy's, 4 with skirts behind them. Lost as many as we got it seemed until we stopped purposefully popping them of the rigger and simply just kept reeling when they were biting until the tension popped it off. Then when their head broke the surface- tried to skip them right into the net before they could start trashing to work the hook loose from their soft mouth. As others have said, there's some bigger ones this year- and they don't skip so easy:)

Hope there's another wave to hit the inlet. Sure is a fun fishery.

All that said about what worked for us, next time we go out the bite might shun us and favour someone else. It's how sockeye fishing seems to go :)
 
coastalmarinesafety said:
Sockeye fishing is so funny in that the bite will follow a boat and stay with it and the bite will shun another boat appearing to do all the same things. I'll just share what worked for us when we were up there. We had our success with short leaders- 20-22" including swivels, black hooks- tadem 5/0 or single 6/0 (hook colour and speed might be the biggest 2 factors from what I've read on here), mini-pink skirts, mini pink and purple, mini pink with black stripes all worked for us, the basic green and orange flashers both worked well, super gold betsy did not, tried it a couple of times just to see. 2.2 MPH was our money speed. Slower than 2MPH didn't work for us, although the inside rod sometimes hit on a turn. More often that not though for a turn it was the outside one that sped up that produced. 40-50ft showing on the rigger, rigger set at 45 seemed to work best. Ran a dummy each side off the ball, it ran maybe 3' back from ball. 8-10' up from that ran a rod clipped pretty close to the rigger line. 8-10' up another rod clipped close to the rigger. All in all had 6 flashers down there, 2 dummy's, 4 with skirts behind them. Lost as many as we got it seemed until we stopped purposefully popping them of the rigger and simply just kept reeling when they were biting until the tension popped it off. Then when their head broke the surface- tried to skip them right into the net before they could start trashing to work the hook loose from their soft mouth. As others have said, there's some bigger ones this year- and they don't skip so easy:)

Hope there's another wave to hit the inlet. Sure is a fun fishery.

All that said about what worked for us, next time we go out the bite might shun us and favour someone else. It's how sockeye fishing seems to go :)
Click to expand...

great post ,
this should really help alot of guys out...
for whatever its worth , we do well with 26 in leaders most days as well ,
mix it up
good on ya
fd
 
Any word on Soxs today? We were on the water by 530 am yesterday. One Hit right away that didn't stick followed by a double header that we landed one of. Then it went dead and we pulled the pin around noon. Thinking we might give it another go tomorrow.

Cheers
 
A good net man and getting the fish to the boat and into the net in as short a time as possible is the key to not losing sockeye.

If you aren't ready to net, do not attempt to bring the fish anywhere close to the boat. A heavy siwash hook in the squirt always led to less lost fish than an ocopus, single or tandem, for me personally.
 
Jeffywestcoast and I were out yesterday. We managed our 8 and lost a dozen more. Not hot fishing buy any means but one here one there. Down deep and 2.2 mph seemed to be the trick
 
@albernifisher glad to hear u had some success. We had the early bite and thought it was going to be a good day but it went quiet for us a most boats around us. Definitely didn't see many nets out. 2.2 mph? I'm just learning the Sockeye fishery but I thought 1.8 was more standard. I tried playing with speed a bit but I don't think I ever went that fast.
 
It wasnt smokin hot but managed to fill the cooler , i would have never believed picking up the speed would work but it seemed to get us more fish ...
 

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