So I took 3 keen and eagar new to fishin' gals out at pedderbay friday. The weather was gorgous and we had a fabulous 8hr on the water. We rented a boat and I found it hard to figure out a correct trolling speed and with no fish or depth finder I didn't know where the sockeye schools were. Tryed to watch and pace off the other boats out there. I was going into the waves and we seemed to almost kinda stay in the same place. Any faster and we'd "pop off" our downriggers.
We used pink squirts on a 2.5ft leader and pink flasher at around 45ft depth. The other side a purple onion flashers and anchovy with blue teaserhead at a 65ft depth.
We only caught 2 nasty looking lingcods which we released.
Couple questions I have are.... 1) how many pulls of line before I clip on the downrigger clip release? I think I was between 30-40 feet behind the boat before I put the clip on.
2) what are your thoughts on scents, which ones do you use?
3) How do you find the tideline? and do you drive into it, or drift back with it?
I learned to fish in the charlottes using only cutplugs and half the time without downriggers so I try and take in all I can to learn the area and what the ol' timers do around here to catch fish!
We are going to go out again in a couple weeks. Will the sockeye be gone by then?? Any input, tips or advice would be awesome. Now that the girls have their feet wet this time we wanna get a salmon in the boat!!!!
Thanks guys,
Ms. Koho

Try jigging the hole..... buzz bombs.. stingers.
I know guys that do really well in there.
As for sockeye in the next couple weeks.... Probabaly a long shot

1)-that's about right but for Sox run it close to the wire no more than 10'.

2)-don't bother anymore

3)-stay on the side that's moving-Salmon will be in the still side waiting for bait to be washed to them and will dart in to grab whatever.

No Sockeye after the middle of the month.

Sockeye will more than likley be done by then.
Keep the flasher real close to the downrigger wire for sockeye WB is right.
The tide lines at Sooke "generally" speaking about 1-2-3 miles out. That would be first second and thrid. But that is a general location, You can see them most times, and there will be a lot of weed and crap along the edges.
Pay attention if you are fishing the tide lines it can get miserably rough in a matter of minutes.Pay attention. Again, pay attention.
Also Race Passage can get FUGLY on some tides.
Think like a fish,they will be in the area that they burn the least amount of energy, kinda like the rivers they will be in the slow water.
Coho should start too show in the next while, I have pretty good luck at the first tide line. I fish a little diffrent though I troll in a Zig Zag pattern towards the US and back towards Canada when I hit fish I troll a figure 8 pattern.
I have good luck with a Hot spot army truck flasher, and an army truck hootchie with a clear belly.
Experiment with leader lengths, 30 to as long as 60 inches,yeah I know 60? it worked so just think outside the box some days.
Last year 6 inch blue wonder spoon with a chrome finish was good out in the frieghter lanes.
I fish them from 55 feet to 125 feet fast troll.
Sooke can be a bit of a learning curve, but most fishermen will give you the basics.
Dan

oh we had no problem going zig zaggy so maybe the coho fishing will be lucky for us.

For Sockeye you use lots of movement and flash in the water.I use 2 dummy flashers on each side.1 at the cannonball and another 10 feet up.Then I stack two rods on each side.The deep one 10' up from the top dummy and then another 10' up from there so I have flashers covering a total of 30' on each side.Nothing is set back more than 10' from the wire or else you can get some really ugly snangles.
Keep the gear in the water once you're into the fish.
I set my lines deep in the quick releases so that I generally have to pop the lines off myself when a fish strikes.You lose a lot of fish when you're fishing for sockeye and I think that the deep set quick releases help to hook the fish.
Fish slow!
In the Alberni Inlet where I fish for Sockeye a lot of people tell you to troll in a straight line but I've found that we hook more fish on the turn so we normally zig zag.
I use squirts on a 20"-25" leader most of the time but I always have at least one small pink spoon in the water and it produces as well as the squirts do.
Dave