If you think that landing a 35-pound coho (if there were any, of course) or a 35 lb chinook rank high as peak salmon experiences, think again. Ocean-fresh chum at less than half those weights have the surface action of coho and the brute strength of big springs. Until you have latched on to a fresh chum, bars so faint you can’t see them through the silver, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Ocean chum often spool anglers who can’t catch up with their reels. The Campbell River fishery, up Seymour Narrows, is really an adrenaline rush in October. Chum are here, there and everywhere. Once you hook one, it pulls 183 metres (200 yards) from your reel, appears beside the boat, goes under your rods and boat, and then reappears two metres (six feet) in the air more than 90 metres (100 yards) on the other side of the boat. The skin will skim off your knuckles and adrenaline will take over you, but it’s a good thing — this is chumming.

From late September to the third week in October, chum destined for southern rivers on Vancouver Island and the mainland, including the Fraser River, stage north of Campbell River until the big rains wash them south. They hold up in the fast waters of Seymour Narrows and its surrounding bays, including Brown’s Bay, Deepwater Bay, Plumper Bay and Separation Head. At Cape Mudge, the lighthouse fishery at the southern tip of Quadra Island, chum retain a huge bite index not seen anywhere south. The fish by the Mudge are so zoned in on reaching their rivers that they scurry by fishing gear. That's why you need to intercept them in the roiling waters or choke points between Vancouver Island and Quadra Island.

To read the full story, pick up the September/October issue of BC Outdoors Sport Fishing at your local newsstand.