Sockeye off Oak Bay???

[saltydawg]

I'd like to know if anyone has had consistent luck targeting sockeye off of Oak Bay. Where do they go when they hit waters south of Race Rocks? I've never seen them in quantities other than off Sooke.
Am I just missing them??
Looking at a map, you'd figure that off Discovery Island would be good. I've dogged tide lines and bait balls in that area before- no sockeye luck!
Anyone bumped into them in this area?

 

[scott craven]

i've fished oak bay for quite a few years and never caught a sockeye
nor have i heard of sockeye caught there.
although i caught & released a wild coho on the bank today
first coho this far east in years

 

[saltydawg]

Thats what I mean. They go past us. Are they really deep? The next time you see them re-appear is Pender Island bluffs.

 

[tubber]

http://www.sanjuanislandsdirectory.com/history_map.htm

If you look at this map link you will see that once the sockeyes get past Sooke and Pedder Bay, they can go a number of routes to get to the Fraser. While some may angle north past Victoria and Oak Bay, I think that most leave Canadian waters and make their way past the San Juans toward the Washington coast between Bellingham and Blaine. I saw a documentary fairly recently where some American fishermen in the Birch Bay/Bellingham area set up a fish trap in the shallows to target Fraser sockeye. The fish make there north past Boundary Bay and the coalport to the Gulf where they meet up with fish from the north and the ones that sneak through the Canadian Gulf Islands.
In 1978(another big Adams River year) I took part in a brief seine opening right inside Active Pass where we found tough tides/currents and very few sockeyes. A few years before that, when I used to sportfish at Porlier Pass, commercial trollers could be seen every summer fishing for sockeyes about 4-5 miles east of there. I don't know whether the fish they were after came from the south or through Johnstone Straight.
In my experience, sockeyes often jump as they travel. If there isn't the odd one jumping, they aren't there. Even when they are deep on the sounder, the odd fish will still be jumping. Sockeyes have a distinctive, side surfing kind of splash when they jump. We used to figure for each fish we saw jumping into the U shaped opening of a seine net being towed during a set, there would be 100 fish swimming below it.