Rain North Delta

[Frank Roepke]

With the rain here, I think the Northern Delta might be cloudy for some time. What are your thoughts?


Frank

[Mrs.Finsallaround]

I sure hope so! That's when the BIG stripes come out and play! :unibrow:

[Mike Churchill]

Frank,

My dad and I launched out of New Hope on the Moke on Monday morning on a falling tide. We started by fishing the North Moke channel over to Giusti's and then ran down the South Moke and worked Beaver, Hog, and Sycamore Sloughs, plus a bit of the Moke outside Hog. The tide turned around the time we left Hog the first time.

Fished from about 8:30 to 3:15. Air temps were in the low 50's.Winds varied from pretty calm to enough to be annoying, but never awful. One brief rain shower but we expected worse, so I'd call it a nice early winter day on the Delta.

Water temps ranged from 51 at New Hope to around 55 most everywhere else. Water clarity was surprisingly good (about 4-6 feet) in the channel between New Hope(Wimpy's) and Giusti's and down in Beaver Slough. Sycamore Slough visibility was a little less, say 3 to 4 feet. In contrast, Hog Slough, the North Moke at Giusti's, and the South Moke all looked like chocolate milk.

Given the wind and my dad's tendinitis, we mixed in some trolling to search for fish in the sloughs, but we picked up only 3 fish all day. The first was a 13 inch LMB that ate a trolled Yozuri in Beaver. The second was an 18 inch Striper that ate a dark Yozuri I was retrieving when we stopped trolling just inside the mouth of Beaver Slough. As I reeled the lure in quickly, I saw a flash behind it about 15 feet from the boat, so I stopped to give it a "Delta dangle." The fish came back and smashed it 2 seconds later.

I got the last fish about 20 minutes later as I was about to give up on finding any more in the area. That one ate a size 2/0 flashtail black Whistler that I had tied on in the morning expecting stained water. Turned out to be my first decent fish this fall--about 6 or 8 pounds or so, and nice and fat. (I've been catching fair numbers of fish, but they've all been 20 inchers or smaller. I've had others on my boat land fish to 9 pounds, but this one was the first on my line.)

No other fish, but lots of Sand Hill Cranes and geese, plus the usual herons, egrets, and marsh hawks to see, plus an otter in Beaver Slough.