It's Starting :)

**Tony Buzolich** · 02-04-2013, 09:00 AM

I know,,,,I know,,,, everybody's anxious about getting going again on stripers closer to home. The delta has kind of been a fizzle with no bait,,, the party boats are rapeing everything that comes into the bay,,,, and the Fish and Wildlife people blame everything else that fails on this wonderful game fish we've all grown up with and learned to love. Some of us have even become addicted to it's persuit and I'm one of them.

This past week I've been on the water four days chasing this wonderful fish. No, the spring run hasn't started. This is just sort of the "Pre-season" game that addicts choose to persue. There are stripers in our rivers ALL year long. Maybe not as many as other times but they're here. You just have to look and work a little harder for them. Winter is always tougher because it's cold,,, damn bone-chilling cold. It's cold outside and it's cold in the water too. The water temps up here have been running between 46-48 degrees. And, it's muddy. Sooooo, we wait. We wait for the rivers to clear a little, and maybe warm a little, and it's starting to happen. We haven't had much rain for the last few weeks and things are starting to clear.

We also wait for one more thing to happen about this time of year,,,, the planting of the smolt. Every year F&W plant steelhead smolt into the rivers at several of the boat ramps closer to the bay where the smolt will eventually migrate. This week they are also adding pens at the dump sites to help the smolt acclimate better to the water At this time it also puts a ton scales and slime and scent into the water as the trucks dump their load. And this rings a dinner bell for EVERY predator in and on the water. You'll immediately see birds downstream diving. Usually gulls, and then mergansers, and sometimes terns and even pelicans. You know squawfish (our most prolific "native" predator) will immediately begin to gorge on these downstream fingerlings, and you'll see otters, and hawks, and catfish, and every other predator along the way eating these morsels, and yes stripered bass love them too.

But, the stripers were here BEFORE they dumped the smolt too. These are the resident fish that stay around all year. Some are early migrating spawners coming up from the bay and delta before the main run in the spring.

This last Friday they started dumping the smolt. We didn't catch a single striper that day. We saw a couple explosions of feeding fish but no mass gorgings of bait like you see in the ocean. Actually, for the last couple of days ALL of the fish we took were taken upstream (ABOVE) the dumped smolt.

The fish we've taken so far have all been cookie-cutter size 7 to 7.5 lbers. Over on the Sac, Bill Siler took a 7 pounder as well on Thursday.

And here's a real suprize we got. Jim May took a beautiful 20+" German Brown on a 2/0 Clouser while chasing stripers below the falls at Shang Hai bend. No one has ever seen or heard of a brown this low in the river system. (think they might eat a few smolt too?) I'll get a picture of this for all of you to seen soon.

But, for now, there's a few stripers around if you want to work for them. I'm sure they're in the American as well and any other river that runs into the bay around here.

The water is still cold, and very very low so becarefull if you go out. Lots of water only a foot or two deep and tons of new snags everywhere.

Good Luck, Tony

**Darian** · 02-04-2013, 09:45 AM

Hay Tony,.... Good to see you back on the water gettin' after 'em. I've been gettin' antsy waiting for something to happen. Gotta install my new Lowrance, elite 7 HD, then I'm in the game....

Here's a question for you.... I already have a Lowrance, M68c fishfinder installed at the drivers station on my boat. I intend to install the Elite 7 on the deck in the bow. Do you know if each one will read signals from the other??? Is it better/necessary to network them??? Hmmm,.... Guess that's two questions

**Tony Buzolich** · 02-04-2013, 10:34 AM

Darian,

I can't help you with that but Bill Siler is the expert on Lowrance. Maybe he'll chime in?
Tony

**briansII** · 02-04-2013, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by Darian

Hay Tony,.... Good to see you back on the water gettin' after 'em. I've been gettin' antsy waiting for something to happen. Gotta install my new Lowrance, elite 7 HD, then I'm in the game....

Here's a question for you.... I already have a Lowrance, M68c fishfinder installed at the drivers station on my boat. I intend to install the Elite 7 on the deck in the bow. Do you know if each one will read signals from the other??? Is it better/necessary to network them??? Hmmm,.... Guess that's two questions

There's a possibility that the sonar on the 2 units will interfere with each other. I've had that happen, and had to turn one unit off for the other to read correctly. The DSI of the Elite will not interfere with other sonar units. There should be a couple ways around the interference, but I'm not an experts. TWO calls to Lowrance should help you. One call to get info, and a followup call to confirm the first call info was spot on. I'm not kidding......don't ask me how I know.

briansII

**Loomis 1** · 02-04-2013, 02:34 PM

Darian,

check PM

Bill Siler

**Jimmie** · 02-04-2013, 05:34 PM

Guess that answers the question I posed to you a short while ago. Thanks for the post. Now I am really antsy!!

**Joe Mateas** · 02-04-2013, 06:13 PM

Tony; Nice to see somebody is getting after them and having some luck. I've finally got some time off, I think I'll plug in the battery charger tonight and see if I can get some stink on my hands sometime this week.

Darian; I had two HDS units on my last boat, not networked and had no problem with interferance.

Jimmie; Check your PM box I just sent over the recipe and a pic of that bluegill clouser you had asked about.

**OceanSunfish** · 02-04-2013, 10:20 PM

If I understood your post correctly, F&W is setting up pens at the release sites only after they released a few truck loads?! This isn't a post bemoaning the loss of planted fish to predators.... Just curious.

**Darian** · 02-04-2013, 10:29 PM

Interesting that some folks had problems running 2 non-networked units, simultaneously, while others didn't. On those that created interference, were the transducers similar, external or internal mount, and same frequencies???