I have caught sockeye on the Kenai, Fraser and believe or not of all places on the North Fork of the Stilly .

The fish on the Kenai were all lined . Every one of them .Hook outside the mouth. Like posted above all the fish were right off the shore .

On the high bank side of the river the flies worked best with a short ( 3' ) leader . On the low bank a single plain hook with a long ( 6 to 8' ) leader worked best .

I did find that by using Pink flies I did catch more Dollies ( that would actually bite ) with them .

Like the Kenai the Fraser smoked right along but had much worse vis than the Kenai . These fish were caught incidental to fishing for ( lining ) kings using a long ( 10') leader with a 1/0 hook with green yarn fishing with 3oz cannonballs . All the Sockeye were caught after completing the drift for Kings and reeling in from straight upstream .

This tells me these fish were biting . There was no swing to line these fish at all . This was well in to the retrieve . These fish had to come up from behind the yarn fly and grab on .

The North Fork of the Stilly gets Sockeye for some reason .Who knows why but they show up every year late in to the summer .This is a fly fishing only river in the summer and by the time the Redds show up the water is low and clear .You can easily see the sokeye are very interested in the fly . Often times evey drift they will move to and inspect the fly but will not take it . They seem to be very curious buggers here and can often times bite so well that you will have to leave the hole to find some steelies that can get a chance at the fly .

I have watched this activity for years with this run .

One time (at band camp) after the fly had completed the swing and had much tension on it the fly was only a few inches unde the surface in about 6' of water , I had placed the rod under my arm to dig out a new fly when a sockeye came out of no where and about took the rod with it .

These are some of my encounters with some of the goofiest fish that swim.

Hope this helps.