Question: What’s the best eating fish we have here in Northern California? King salmon? Nope. Cold water trout? Not even close! Mahi Mahi from Bullards Bar Reservoir? (old joke) Nah! Sixty-pound baby heron-eating brown trout from Mentiroso Lake? No! How about lingcod? Wrong again! Of course, this is very subjective, but I feel that you just can’t beat fresh halibut. Ohhh yeeaa!
We’re talking California halibut here, not Pacific halibut (the kind you get up in Alaska). California halibut range from Baja up to southern Oregon. They’re much smaller than the barn door-sized Pacifics that can weigh up to 400 pounds, but who the heck needs a truck load of fillets the size of a pool table, anyway? Use a heavy bass rod or a steelhead stick here and our flatties will give you all the fight you want. California ‘butts typically average about 10 pounds, but they can get into the high 30’s and, sometimes, the low 40’s.
[click to continue…]
If you’re looking to do a little stream trout fishing, now’s not a bad time to head up into the high Sierra. While a lot of the back country is still snowed in, there is some very good water you can easily hit from the road. One good trek is the 49-50-89 circuit. I did it earlier this week — here’s what conditions are looking like right now:
[click to continue…]
I often receive letters and e-mails from readers out there who don’t fish but read this column anyway. Occasionally, somebody will ask me to define some of the fishing terms that I rattle off here — they say that it sounds to them like I’m speaking a foreign language. So, I figured it was time for a little Angler Vocab 101. Okay, kiddies, in your seats, please. Here we go…there will be a quiz at the end of the semester.
[click to continue…]
A while back, I received a letter from a carp fishing group that wanted me to go fishing with them and do a story. I resisted at first, but was finally convinced to go out fishing for, er, carp. Very interesting…
The chap who invited me was a transplanted Englishman who was a carp fishing fanatic. Wait a second, a carp fishing fanatic? Well, let me back up here. In Great Britain, most salmon and trout fishing takes place on private waters and is reserved for the upper crust. Over there, if you’re not in with Prince Chuck, and can’t afford $3,000 per day to fish, forget it. By the way, if you can afford that much to fish, I’m currently booking guided trips for anything you want to catch, baby! Anyhow, back to my story.
[click to continue…]
