Fishing Report Dec. 6, 2007

It’s officially over — the 2007 salmon season, the most epic bust of a year is done. We had some decent (relatively speaking, of course) fishing in the early mornings with Kwikfish on the lower American River this past week, but this rain has officially sent the small pod of fish that I was working on up the creek.

We were hooking 2-4 kings before dawn each outing and actually had one glory morning in which we hooked 7. All the kings came on K14 and K15 Kwikfish in a strange little pocket below the train trestle in the lower river. I’m not sure why they were hanging out in that little sandy bucket, but they were there for a few days. Like I said earlier, the rain was all they needed to make the dash upstream and yesterday, we skunked out….marking the end of it.

The kings we caught were all in pretty good shape considering how late in the year it was. Oh well, it was a nice little shot of decent action to help dull the pain of what was a dismal salmon run here in the Valley.

I’ve also started steelhead fishing on the American and we’re seeing plenty of action on egg-eater halfpounders in the 1- to 3-pound class and have hooked and lost what appeared to be a couple of the first big winter fish of the season. Steelheading is just going to keep getting better and better…

DELTA STRIPERS
Now, it’s back to the Delta to start striper fishing again. The action is going to hold up a lot longer this season since the water is still extremely clear and the temperatures are hanging in there. That cold snap last weekend started bring down the water temps, but this rain will warm things right back up. We’ll be back out again throwing swimbaits, jigs — and even a little topwater — for as long as it lasts.

FISH RESCUE
Speaking of Delta stripers, I caught a whole bunch of them last weekend during the Prospect Island Fish Rescue. You can see my pictures from the salvage effort here: The Stranded Stripers of Prospect Island

UPCOMING
It’s pretty much going to be Delta stripers and Valley steelhead from here on out. I’ll also be running a few special North Coast steelhead strips over the winter, so stay tuned…

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Related Articles:

• Delta Striper salvage effort underway today
• More thoughts on the Prospect Island Fish Kill
• Are stripers a threat to salmon?
• Killing Machine!
• Scenes from the Prospect Island Fish Rescue