Fish with JD

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Kodiak Island Car Fishing Adventure!

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So people often ask me where to go fishing in Alaska and I often point them to Kodiak Island. The place is beautiful and you can have an amazing do-it-yourself adventure at a reasonable price by just renting a car, staying at a B&B (The absolute best: A Smiling Bear) and eating on the cheap (there’s Taco Bell, Safeway, etc).

The Kodiak road system takes you to some pretty epic fishing…fresh and surf…and through some awesome countryside. I’ve made a couple trips up there over the past few seasons and this is one from 2011 that I finally got to putting to video.

Boys Day Off: Lake Nacimento fishing trip

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So sometimes you just have to get out and get away from town…and go do something a little different once in a while.

That’s exactly what K-Dawg, Scotty & I did yesterday when we headed down to Central California’s Lake Nacimento, where we chased after white bass and spotts. It was a great day just getting out and hanging with the fellas, away from all the drama of guiding and commercial crabbing.

Luckily, we put together a few patterns and had a nice day of catching…for the cherry on top!

Here’s a little pictorial. While we found very few fish near the inlets (not much water this year), we managed to locate some nice schools of shad…and, I the afternoon, there were some boils…which led to a flurry of fun topwater action…

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But we also caught most of our fish on small plastics worked near the bottom…

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Scotty with a nice spotty…

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Fun little exotics: white bass look like a striper and and crappie got together. Called “sand bass” or “sandies” in the South, they are pretty fun on light gear…

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The lake was lower that last time we went a few years back, but after a rainless winter, I expected the lake elevation to be even lower…

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Another nice spott on the popper…

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Good times and a nice sunset on the way home…

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What a season: American River Steelhead, 2013!

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We here in Sacramento, CA were treated to the best winter steelhead season the American River has produced since the mid 1980’s. Considering I’ve fished this river since the 1970’s, it was a delight to see her healthy and vibrant again. For several years, the American had become the “Ameri-Can’t” and catching an adult steelhead was a difficult proposition.

There has been a strong effort to improve the river’s fisheries in recent years — spawning gravel has been placed in the American’s upper reaches and water temps are cooler in the summers. Hopefully, 2013 was just the beginning of this great urban river’s revival!

The Craziest Kings on the Planet!

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God, I love king salmon! They’re such badass creatures, aren’t they? And there’s nowhere on the planet better than Alaska’s Nushagak River to experience these bad boys in all their glory. In June and July, the ‘Nush gets invaded by mind-boggling numbers of fish, and the kings themselves are the craziest, most aggressive, over-the-top snappy ones you’ll find anywhere.

Though I’m retired now, I spent 7 years guiding this amazing stream at a lodge called Alaska King Salmon Adventures and, every year about this time, that little itch starts…the little twinge at the back of my skull that tells me I should be thinking about heading north. While I haven’t been to the river in several years, the memories of its loco kings still haunt my dreams. Click here to read more…