Somass River Fishing for Chinook Salmon
It's the end of August and the Somass/Stamp River has opened up for Chinook & Coho Salmon. This is an incredible fishery here on Vancouver Island as it provides a large number of BIG salmon coming into the river. These fish can be caught all throughout the river system but many target them in the Somass section of the river which is only a few miles from the ocean so they are fresh! In this Journal I'll walk through the details of our successful early season trip and how we got our limit of Chinook salmon using a single bead under a float.
Environmental and Tidal Factors
There was a little rain the night before and I figured that might push some of the Chinook from the saltwater into the river, and figured they'd be coming in with the high tides.
We arrived at the river around 7:30 am and found the fishing to be pretty slow. There wasn't a lot of action on the water and didn't seem like a lot of fish were pushing in yet. I got into a single Chinook around 9:00am but lost it, but other than that there wasn't a lot guys hooking up.
This was a Friday morning so it wasn't as busy as weekend, so we had lots of space to move around and try casting too.
Around 10:30 am the action really turned on, and we started to see a lot more activity on the water as lots of fish were jump and splashing around. With the incoming tide came the Chinook and we fished another 2 hours roughly to 12:30-1:00 pm getting multiple bites.
Float Fishing with one 12mm Bead
My initial plan was to fish roe primarily under a float. However, I forgot my cooler and roe in the garage! I realized this when we got to the river and there was no chance in me driving back. So I decided to float fish beads instead. Don't get me wrong beads are deadly too, but I was pretty disappointed as I had spent a bunch of time playing around with different roe cures and bait ideas.
Anyway, we had to fish beads and it turned out just fine as one bead alone ended up getting us our Chinook salmon limits.
We fished a 12mm mottled Cerise soft bead above a number 2 Octopus hook. Leader was a 3 foot 20# fluorocarbon (a bit overkill) line. My rod and reel setup are a 10'6 Shimano Convergence casting rod with a Daiwa low profile baitcaster reel. It's a deadly combo.
Fishing depths under the float & what we caught
The river isn't very high and was not moving very quickly, so I wasn't fishing very deep. With a float setup you set your depth by moving bobber stoppers up/down your mainline.
In this river there can be some really deep holes where I'm fishing 10 feet deep, but this day we were getting the fish around 5 to 7 feet deep.
We ended up getting our Chinook limits this morning within roughly 2 hours of fishing. Limits were 2 Chinook per license (only 1 can be over 77cm). So we had 4 beautiful clean red meat Chinooks to take home.
Tip on Float Fishing Beads, When to set the hook
Bead fishing can be more technical than people think. The bead is usually an inch or two above the hook and so the fish can bite the bead and miss the hook many times. However, there are ways to reduce this or know when to set the hook.
My biggest tip is to watch your float like a Peregrine Falcon! Most anglers think if the float goes down to set the hook, that's true but that's not the only time you should be setting your hook.
As mentioned the bead is an inch or two above the hook so often times a fish will allow the bead to enter its mouth for a moment and then it'll spit it out when it realizes it isn't real. That short moment where the fish has the bead in its mouth the bobber doesn't always go down, in fact many times it will momentarily pause or slow up. Those are the times you need to look for and set your hook!
To clarify, watch your float and its travel speed, if it slows up for a second, set the hook! Hooksets are free, you'll be surprised how many times you'll hook into a fish this way and your float never went down. Try this, it'll improve your hook ups massively!
Float Fishing Beads for River Chinook Salmon
This video I got out with my youngest son and we got our limit of Chinook salmon while fishing a single 12mm bead under a float. This was a memorable father-son trip!