Casino Jim:sockeye do bite wool.
I will relate a short (no pun intended) floating story re sockeye fishing.
It was when we first got the sockeye open through The Fraser Valley Salmon Society and we had a high runoff and the water levels were up that year during the sockeye migration. I landed 9 or 11 one day ( not sure of numbers) while fishing springs. I was connecting with the sockeye in a clear river mouth area on bugs.
As I use a little pink wool when I fish springs, coho and steelhead with my roe or bugs my bug fell off or was taken off by a fish. I thought I would try fishing just the wool. Well to my surprise the sockeye were pulling the float down and if I was winding in slowly they would chase it.
So that day I knew they would bite but of course they have to be able to see the wool or if using bait smell it.
PP Patches if you are concerned if the fish you are catching are biting all you have to see were they are hooked. From my fishing experience a biting fish will be hooked inside the mouth at least 95% of the time while a fish flossed will be hooked outside the mouth 95% of the time.
Just inspect the mouth area when you land it but of course keep it in the water until you decide if you are keeping or releasing it.
I also think I will take DK adviceand try floatfishing long the edges of the Fraser when the sockeye are in thick. However when we started fishing sockeye we fished that way and did not get many. As well we knew nothing about flossing so we never checked where the were hooked but now we know so will be inspecting each fish caught if we hook any. Stay tunned as we will see if we can
roll some shortly.
