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Bruiser Striper Caught
I got in my kayak today and there was a guy in the slough in a small boat throwing an Alabama rig and claiming to have seen on his sonar a school of 50 big stripers. I thought "yeah right". He said he had lost the school when he got his Alabama rig snagged and was cruising around in his boat looking for them on his sonar. I was skeptical but I thought maybe he had spooked them with the Alabama rig and they had bolted upstream to the next good holding spot where I just happened to be heading. Sure enough they were there. I hooked three big ones that were laying within about 50 feet of each other. The hook fell out on the first one - bummer. The second one went to the bottom and wrapped the line around a log resulting in a break off - big bummer and foul language. The third one was just barely hooked but stayed on and was 10 pounds. That was enough activity to chase them out of there and off toward Yuba City to see Tony. I expect it will be a long time before I run into a school like that again.
Pretty good day. Winds were light and some other nice stripers and a couple of bass were caught. My homemade mullet fly seems to be working which is good.
http://i.imgur.com/19pYYbD.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/U562NZn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/kZ51s6S.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QU6fl6Z.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gnhdJMi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/NuzVwL3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aUrOsYg.jpg
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That sure looks like a 3 ATTA BOY fish to me. Good job.
Regards, Gene
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One "good" fish like that can convert someone to fly fishing for Stripers.......thanks John.
In the past 20 years two things have dramatically impacted the fly fishing world on the West Coast.
1) Spey casting / two handed fly fishing
2) Striped Bass on a fly rod
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I’d say there’s a third and it’s Pyramid lake.
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Are you sure you're not on fire? Nice release shot! Thanks for sharing again John!
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Love that forth picture of the big fish. I always look at the tail to see if you can get you hand around the base. That's a good one John.
They were dumping smolt last week on the Feather and that will definitely start bringing fresh fish up river.
Keep the pictures coming. Hope to see you out there.
Tony
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Atta boy John,
Careful, that is a shortcut to absolute addiction.
....lee s.
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Superb , super post as always
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I told my friend the same thing about the hand on the tail. The hand gives away how thick the tail is and how big the fish is. I thought about getting someone with really small hands to hold my fish so they would look bigger.
It might be a little to late to avoid the addiction. I seem to like hunting for the fish. Casting, searching, studying the water for where they like to hold and tying flies to figure out what they want to grab. Bass and stripers both involve all of that.
Stripers are kind of a crazy fish. A predator from the Atlantic Ocean swimming around the Delta crushing flies.