Paper Mill Sockeye
I spent July 3 to July 7 camping in Port Alberni with my son and we fished Paper Mill Dam on the Somass with little success (probably because it takes time to learn the best -- not to mention few -- holes and how to drift into them properly) and, for the most part, with little enjoyment. We came home with four average-sized sockeye.
With about 100 yards of fishable river on each side, Paper Mill is a shoulder-to-shoulder gong show.
We ran into some very nice locals there who were quite willing to share some knowledge about leader length, float depth, a producing hole, etc. At the same time, there were some really annoying and frustrating pieces of work -- guys who would catch well over their limit of two per day and just carry on fishing thereby hogging a spot that could have been used by another fisherman. Then they would pack up and cart their fish off only to return a while later the same day, basically elbow their way back into their favourite spot, and start all over again. These people were well known to the locals who would say things like "Oh that guy, he'll be back and forth until he has six or eight fish today."
Incredibly, we ran into a guy in the local tackle shop who was telling the clerk and anyone else within ear shot that he had caught 170 fish the previous day and evening at Paper Mill. Now, he may well have been exaggerating, but he was buying a new smoker and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just for a couple of fish. In any event, we heard lots of people talking about catching 20 or more fish on the evening of July 6, which happened to be a day that I decided not to bother going out to Paper Mill again after spending a few hours there in the morning.
The last two days that we were in Port Alberni we didn't go to Paper Mill at all because I just couldn't stand watching people snag fish after fish, most just foul-hooked, drag them up onto the rocks, and often just kick them back into the water if they thought they would like to catch a bigger one. The whole atmosphere just wasn't my idea of fishing.
I'm 60 years old and the camping trip with my 22 year-old-son was great. I've never caught a sockeye before, so that was fun, too. Watching my son catch his first salmon of any kind, a sockeye with the hook cleanly in its mouth, was an absolute joy.
Paper Mill was an experience, but I really don't think it is one that I'll be repeating.