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Weedbeds are good; docks and lily pads, too. Rock piles and creek channels, and all the rest…
But sometimes, sometimes….the best (and often overlooked) big bass haunts are less obvious.
Instead of finding a lunker largemouth on the “name brand” types of spots like a rock heap, you may find one, lonely boulder that holds fish like crazy. Or it could be just a small finger off a creek channel or a random post like this one.
One of the reasons these non A-List spots can be so productive is…
We began work today on Northern California’s Stanislaus River to build several Chinook salmon spawning riffles and juvenile holding areas.
The gravel restoration work is being done by Dennis Hood of KDH Environmental, for whom I’m working as a consultant, and should give the river, which is a tributary to California’s San Joaquin River, a huge shot in the arm from a fishery enhancement standpoint.
Several riffles were built in the river’s upper reaches some years back and they helped bring the wild Chinook population back from near extinction (the run was down to something 200 fish) to a run that now numbers anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 fish annually.
Robbie Hammond of Discovery Bay, CA poses here with the largest lingcod ever caught on rod and reel.
Hammond caught the beast in the Gulf of Alaska while fishing with Capt. Steve Smith of Capt. Steve’s Fishing Lodge.
The ling tipped the scales to 82 pounds, 6 ounces and beat the previous record by about a pound.
The story of the catch may even be more impressive than the fish itself. Capt. Smith said that Hammond, his dad and a group of friends were fishing the first week of August with him. Early in the morning, they made a stop and everybody dropped the jigs over the side.
They immediately got tied into a triple hook up on heavy fish. Hammond, his dad Allan and one of their buddies, Brent, fought their fish for a half hour. Forty minutes into the battle, Brent’s fish was the first to come to the surface…
It was “just” a 50-pound lingcod.
Mad River Outfitters in Arcata, CA may just be one of the coolest tackle shops around, but even they have some skeletons in the closet…like this sorry excuse for a brown mount. To their credit, this nasty beast isn’t displayed on the wall (anymore) but is instead piled on a junk shelf in the back room. I have to assume that this fish actually looked better than this when it was pulled from the water…because now it’s so ugly that it kinda reminds me of a “brown trout” that I “released” into the porcelain pond earlier this morning…
Representatives from Mad River Outfitters declined to comment.
So fall is just around the corner and that means that Chinook salmon are, or will soon be, pointing their noses up into their natal streams. Unfortunately, there are lots of rivers up and down the West Coast this season that are running very low.
Of course, early season kings are notoriously big fans of backtrolled, sardine-wrapped plugs like FlatFish and Kwikfish, but low/clear water conditions can make things tough. Luckily, there are some things you can do to help improve your odds…
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