Tony Buzolich
09-20-2010, 07:55 PM
The delta is a really big place with over a thousand miles of levees and sloughs and some even bigger bays and wide parts of the Sac and San Joaquin Rivers that seem like oceans. This year the season is a bit ahead of normal and I've been getting good reports of stripers being taken throughout the area. No big concentrations of fish in any one spot but scattered everywhere. And when you have such a large area to search and explore you have to keep moving until you find a school that will cooperate and take your offering.
The alarm is set for 3:45AM, grab some coffee, meet up with your buddies, and get on the road by 4:30AM. Then a two hour drive to your favorite launch site and try to catch the right tide at first light. Stripers like low light so getting started early is standard procedure.
Depending upon where you launch, you most often hit some of the known favorite spots that have produced for you before. Today we started in the dark headlong into a blowing wind. As we approached our first stop we could see birds working over the San Andreas Shoals. If you hit the shoal on an outgoing tide fish often stack up in an eddy where the deep water meets the shallow bar and the fish wait for bait to come to them by the strong currant. Today we had to deal with wind. The currant is falling one way while the wind is pushing the boat around the opposite way. Tough fishing. But, we see fish breaking the surface chasing bait. Soon enough we hook up to several small stripers that think they're bigger than they really are. You've got to give them credit, they're fiesty as hell and will slam a fly that is almost as big as they are.
We spot more fish busting the surface on the other side of the river. Maybe these will be a school of bigger fish? We move and immediately connect on several more dinks but they are getting a little bigger and put a good bend in your rod.
I decide that we need to keep moving before our falling tide runs out and things turn to a standstill. Stripers like moving water and it possible to chase the tides in the delta if you following the highs and lows with a good chart. Sometimes the tide will have stopped around Sherman Lake while it is still flowing strong coming out of the tract. You just have to move. Get to a desired spot, give it 10-15 minutes of serious casting, and if you haven't hooked up or gotten a grab move again.
This is pretty much how we fish the delta. Keep moving until you find them and today we moved a lot. And today, we found them. Some spots were full of small juveniles that you couldn't keep off the hook. On a 5 weight or a 6 weight these little guys would really be fun but this is not what were looking for. We keep moving until we find another school and work them for a while still looking for bigger fish. And so the whole day went.
Late morning the tide started to come in and we found several groups of nicer fish holding along the weed lines. They seemed to be right in tight to the weeds looking for bluegills. A yellow fly was the ticket. We'd make a pass near one of the many rock walls and get slammed hard. Yahoo, better fish and hungry. We'd play out the fish, sometimes a double, and then return up currant of where we hooked up first. Make another pass and get another hook up. This went on for several hours before other boats saw our action and move in. At this point we decided these fish had been hit hard enough and we moved out.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b320/buzolich/IMG_0232upload.jpg
Hitting a few more spots on our way home we ended the day with between 48 and 52 fish. A lot of them were juveniles but over a third of them were legal fish in the three to eight pound range.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b320/buzolich/IMG_0231upload.jpg
This was a really good day but it required moving at lot, following the tides, watching the birds, hitting favorites known spots, but above all not getting lost. As I stated earlier the delta is a big place and so much of it looks all the same. Carry a good compass and have your cell phone with you. Watch for landmarks in the distance like Mt. Diablo and try and keep your bearings. Safety on the water is all important.
TONY
The alarm is set for 3:45AM, grab some coffee, meet up with your buddies, and get on the road by 4:30AM. Then a two hour drive to your favorite launch site and try to catch the right tide at first light. Stripers like low light so getting started early is standard procedure.
Depending upon where you launch, you most often hit some of the known favorite spots that have produced for you before. Today we started in the dark headlong into a blowing wind. As we approached our first stop we could see birds working over the San Andreas Shoals. If you hit the shoal on an outgoing tide fish often stack up in an eddy where the deep water meets the shallow bar and the fish wait for bait to come to them by the strong currant. Today we had to deal with wind. The currant is falling one way while the wind is pushing the boat around the opposite way. Tough fishing. But, we see fish breaking the surface chasing bait. Soon enough we hook up to several small stripers that think they're bigger than they really are. You've got to give them credit, they're fiesty as hell and will slam a fly that is almost as big as they are.
We spot more fish busting the surface on the other side of the river. Maybe these will be a school of bigger fish? We move and immediately connect on several more dinks but they are getting a little bigger and put a good bend in your rod.
I decide that we need to keep moving before our falling tide runs out and things turn to a standstill. Stripers like moving water and it possible to chase the tides in the delta if you following the highs and lows with a good chart. Sometimes the tide will have stopped around Sherman Lake while it is still flowing strong coming out of the tract. You just have to move. Get to a desired spot, give it 10-15 minutes of serious casting, and if you haven't hooked up or gotten a grab move again.
This is pretty much how we fish the delta. Keep moving until you find them and today we moved a lot. And today, we found them. Some spots were full of small juveniles that you couldn't keep off the hook. On a 5 weight or a 6 weight these little guys would really be fun but this is not what were looking for. We keep moving until we find another school and work them for a while still looking for bigger fish. And so the whole day went.
Late morning the tide started to come in and we found several groups of nicer fish holding along the weed lines. They seemed to be right in tight to the weeds looking for bluegills. A yellow fly was the ticket. We'd make a pass near one of the many rock walls and get slammed hard. Yahoo, better fish and hungry. We'd play out the fish, sometimes a double, and then return up currant of where we hooked up first. Make another pass and get another hook up. This went on for several hours before other boats saw our action and move in. At this point we decided these fish had been hit hard enough and we moved out.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b320/buzolich/IMG_0232upload.jpg
Hitting a few more spots on our way home we ended the day with between 48 and 52 fish. A lot of them were juveniles but over a third of them were legal fish in the three to eight pound range.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b320/buzolich/IMG_0231upload.jpg
This was a really good day but it required moving at lot, following the tides, watching the birds, hitting favorites known spots, but above all not getting lost. As I stated earlier the delta is a big place and so much of it looks all the same. Carry a good compass and have your cell phone with you. Watch for landmarks in the distance like Mt. Diablo and try and keep your bearings. Safety on the water is all important.
TONY