Fishing Report (Oct. 9, 2007)
October 9, 2007
Klamath Kings & Steelhead
Since our Klamath River trips were so well-received last month (and the salmon bite locally is dead), I’ve set aside another week to go up there and chase kings and steelhead out of the jetboat My buddies have been fishing lately and said it’s been off-the-charts good, so we should see some nice fishing for both species.
I’ll be up there Oct. 22-28…if you’d like to give the Klamath a try, get back with me ASAP. Late October is awesome…very few people, lots of fish and fantastic scenery.
Delta Stripers
Striper fishing is improving on the Delta and we’ve been seeing 20-30 fish a day most outings. I’ve been mixing it up each day by throwing topwater, swimbaits and jigs. We had a tough one on Tuesday due to wind…we still caught a bunch of fish but they were all dinks…but the fishing should get right back on track when the weather calms down.
Sacramento River Salmon
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, you know that we’re mired in the worst salmon season we’ve ever seen here in the Central Valley. There’s no real way to sugar-coat it…the fishing sucks! I’ve been averaging 1-2 kings a day (no skunks, so far!) while fishing between Sacramento and Walnut Grove. The good news is the fish are big and bright…there’s just not many of them.
Here’s a 16-pound hen we got on Sunday near Clarksburg on the Sacramento River, which was 1 of 2 bites we had that day. At the ramp, we were checked by the DFG’s angler survey crew who had boated from Rio Vista to Sacramento and were on their way back down. Besides our king, they had seen one other salmon taken by all the boats on the river! Brutal! I almost felt bad for killing it — that fish could have been about 25% of the entire 2007 run!
I will say this — there’s still a chance we’ll get some kings in the Sac and American later in the month and on into November. Over the past few years, the best action has been late in the season.
Reservations & More Info
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FISHING REPORT Sept. 23, 2007
September 23, 2007
With salmon fishing still very tough on the Sacramento, Feather & American rivers, I opted for other species this week. The best bet has been Delta stripers, which are just coming into the system now.
I tried the Sacramento side a few times and found some stripers, but have since switched over the to San Joaquin side, where there seems to be more fish. On SJ side, we have been hooking 15-30 fish a day on plastics and topwater baits.
Yesterday, we hooked 4 fish over 10 pounds on surface lures, including one that got in the weeds and broke off that was probably a good solid 20 pounder. We also found a WFO jig bite that could have produced 100 stripers had we want to sit there on them (most were shakers and we got tired of trying to weed through ‘em). In addition, we got some keeper-sized linesiders on the surface, plus some good largemouth from 3-5 pounds.
Fishing Report, Aug. 19
August 17, 2007
Well, well, well, long time no chat, eh? Sorry about that! My weekly Fishing Report kinda got left for dead there for awhile, but it’s baaaack!
Klamath River
I just returned home from the Klamath River, where the king salmon bite had yet to take off. Luckily, there was a steelie here and there to keep thing interesting. Figure the kings will be hot and heavy by the end of the month…
Here’s a quick video of Mike T. getting his butt handed to him by a chrome steelhead:
Valley Salmon
So far, the salmon action is off to a slow start on the Feather and Sacramento rivers. Up around Oroville, the Feather’s been pumping out a few fish — mostly dark springers that are moving back out of the Low Flow Section, where they’ve been holding for awhile — and the occasional chrome fall-run.
Fishing report, July 10
July 10, 2007
LAKE TAHOE MACKINAW
The mackinaw bite at Lake Tahoe was wide-open early in the week and we had no trouble limiting out before 8 AM each day.
However, it was like somebody threw a switch later in the week and the bite got tougher. Though we still graphed ridiculous numbers of fish, they had a pretty severe case of lockjaw and it was a struggle to get biters.
Fishing Report, July 3
July 3, 2007
Well, the fire at South Lake Tahoe is just about contained and, after staying away all last week, we got back out on the lake again today and found limits of macks for everybody on board.
We fished 2-ounce spoons in 80 to 130 feet of water and found most of our fish suspended below shrimp beds. The weather is beautiful and there’s no smoke up here on the North Shore! The smoke’s all but gone on the south end, too, so don’t hesitate to come up for the weekend. All the businesses down there could really use a good holiday weekend after that terrible fire.
Fishing Report June 21, 2007
June 21, 2007
Lake Tahoe Mackinaw
It was one hell of a week of mack fishing on Lake Tahoe…easy limits every day. We had the boat tagged out before 7 am each day…except on Wed., when we had to stretch it “all the way” until 8 a.m. All the macks were cookie-cutter 4 to 6 pounders and were taken jigging with light gear — 2-ounce spoons and medium bass rods.
The best part of the whole deal is we were totally alone every morning.
We’ll be running these trips through the beginning of August (then it’s off for some hot Klamath River action).
Generally, the weather in Tahoe is great in June and July — cool in the early a.m. and beautiful and warm after the sun comes up.
Fishing Report, June 9, 2007
June 9, 2007
Landlocked Coho Fishing
We did a trip up to Oroville today and fished for a couple of hours for the landlocked coho salmon up there. The bite was red hot and we had three doubles and hooked somewhere around 15 fish, keeping 7 for the smoker. I’m here to tell ya, these fish are awesome! They were all 16-19 inches and fought like crazy. They popped the line off the downrigger clips with gusto, burned drag and all of ‘em jumped a lot. And the little salmon all had bright orange meat in them as well…
Read on for the shad and Lake Tahoe mackinaw report…
Fishing Report, May 23
May 23, 2007
Feather River Shad
We transitioned more into a full-time shad type of pattern last week as schools of the big ol’ lovable herring showed up en masse. Shad fishing was pretty much full-throttle all week from Verona to Shanghai Rapids on pink and champagne mini grubs. Read more
Fishing Report, May 14
May 14, 2007
Stripers Still Going: We had a banner week last week on the Feather River, where we found a white-hot striper bite in the mornings on topwater plugs. The majority of the fish were in the 4- to 8-pound class, but we got some dandies like this 16 pounder that Jim Jones got on a popper at dawn.
For several mornings, we were lucky enough to find some marauding schools of fish and, for an hour or so, it would be a fish every cast.
By Sunday, however, the big surface-crashing schools had thinned out.
That was the case Monday as well…we found a few solo boilers on the surface and picked off about 4 of them before the bite died. After that, we switched to rip baits and found a nice little bite on fish to 12 pounds.
The stripers aren’t the only game in town, either…
Fishing Report, May 5
May 5, 2007
We’ve been seeing a nice crop of stripers lately. Here’s Dale Milam with some nice keepers from Friday.
Read on for all the latest fishing report action from the Feather, American, Bay, etc…
Feather River
On the Feather yesterday, we started out tossing Pencil Poppers and immediately caught two nice fish on top and missed a couple others that boiled on the lures. We then switched to dunking sardines, which resulted in some dink-style action. After that, I had the guys start throwing jerkbaits and we found a nice pod of fish and had lots of doubles and probably hooked in the neighborhood of 30 keeper stripers.
