Delta Bass Reports?

[TPO]

I've been hoping to see some Delta bass reports on the Forum but its been pretty quiet, so I decided to post my own report, weak as it may be.... I'm hoping some others with more luck/skill than I do might chime in with some advice?

I fished for a few hours yesterday morning, my first time out since May. Try as I may, after a coffee pit stop, construction traffic on eastbound 580, and time inflating my pontoon/rigging gear, I wasn't on the water in Whiskey Slough until 7 AM. It was dead calm out there, and throwing top water bugs tight to the rock banks brought no grabs. I switched to my other rig and tried subsurface, a black/yellow rubber leg wooly pattern on a sink tip line, for nothing either (didn't give it a lot of time). A slight breeze picked up around 8:00 and created a surface ripple; I switched back to my popper rig and continue to pound the bank. Nothing near the bank, but about 15-20' off the rocks, in water I think is roughly 8' deep I started to get into some blowups. Hooked a nice fish that pulled hard/deep and went airborne a few time, the last jump next to my pontoon sent the barbless popper flying. Ugh.... Getting a good look, I think that fish was pushing 4 lbs. I'm guessing the rippled surface helped (certainly does on trout lakes) and I expect the fish were in deeper water even while it was still relatively cool in the early morning. I had more luck popping that bug pretty hard, I imagine the commotion brought the fish up from the deeper water. The ripple died down and so did the bite. At the end of the day, I only had one smallish fish to hand in about 2.5 hours on the water, lost several, but I nonetheless enjoyed being out there. The nice fish willing to come to my fly has me motivated to get back out there again sometime soon. If I was successful in uploading these pics, here are some of the flies I was throwing, my own ties:






Tom