Okay, so the ocean is completely closed to salmon fishing this year. The final decision has yet to come out, but prospects for king fishing in the Sacramento Valley are also very dim. So, where can you get you salmon fix?

The Klamath River!
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Well, it’s official…there will be a complete closure of commercial and sport king salmon fishing off California and most of Oregon this year.

On April 10, the Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted the most restrictive salmon fisheries in the history for the West Coast, in response to the unprecedented collapse of Sacramento River fall Chinook and the exceptionally poor status of coho salmon from Oregon and Washington. The recommendation will be forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service for approval by May 1, 2008.

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Hey JD,

I was reading your recent report on the Lowrance LMS 527C sonar and have a question for you. I know that you have fished for kokanee and trout, so I wanted to ask your expertise on is this unit for these gamefish.

Do you think this unit is more than adequate, or would you recommend spending a few more bucks and go to the next level of sonars like the Lowrance X-27C with 8000 watts and the most pixels?

The goal is to fish smarter with the sonar, but do you think the added cost would be worth it for trout and kokanee as the target fish?

–Andy

That LMS 527C is more than adequate — unless you’re hankering for a huge screen. I’ve got a buddy with one of those jumbo graphs that looks like a 52-inch flat screen plasma TV and we kid him about having to sit on a phone book just to see over it! The big screens are nice, but I don’t see the huge advantage.

In this day and age when everything is getting more expensive, I’d say save the money and use those extra couple hundred bucks for something like, oh maybe a half tank of gas or something…

How sick is this: Sturgeon poachers busted in Northern California recently had been using baby Chinook salmon for bait!

Wardens from the California Department of Fish and Game arrested nine suspects Friday morning for violations involving the illegal take of white sturgeon from the Sacramento River.
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JD, I mainly fish for salmon, trout and steelhead. I’ve never really had any desire to fish bass fish and have thought of them as kind of a boring fish. As I get older, however, I’m really finding myself wanting to go after the bucketmouths more often. I only live about half an hour from Clearlake and want to get good at bass fishing. I’m not worrying about figuring it out, I just want some help with rod selection for different techniques. My question is this…which of my steelhead and salmon rods will work best for crankbaits, spinnerbaits, swimbaits, jig fishing, and fishing plastics with different rigs, etc? I know most of my rods are long, but oh well, I’ll make due. Thanks very much for your help!
–Kevin

Kevin,

Without going into every rod you own, let’s keep it simple. Yes, most of your steelie sticks are going to be too long for normal bassing, but if you’re trying to save a little $$ by not buying a bunch of new stuff, you can get by with some of your current gear.

For crankbaits, use any Kwikfish or Hotshotting rods you may have — ones with a soft tip and some good backbone. For flipping jigs, stout back-bouncing rods should do the trick. Heavy salmon back-bouncers will also probably suffice for topwater frogging and tossing big swimbaits.

For finesse tactics like drop-shotting, use a light spinning rod.

Hope that helps!

–JD