Scratching It Out

[John H]

I am like a chicken in the yard scratching around in the dirt hoping to find an overlooked piece of grain or a bug. In my case it is scratching around in the delta hoping to find one more striper willing to bite before the water gets any colder or muddier. I did manage to scratch up a nice one yesterday. I also tied up a few clousers and saw some fall color in late afternoon light. Some real beauty on the shortest day of the year. Cheers, tight lines, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I could never find Clouser Minnows that nice but I am sure one of the commercial fly companies has some now.

I am sure that fish gave you a fight.




I know some old friends in Sacramento who are really good conventional anglers and they have been getting nice Stripers very recently with live "Mudsuckers" on the bottom in the Delta. They have very good electronic and know how to use them. They find the bait fish and Stripers first with electronics and then fish for them.

[John H]

I heard a guy on the radio talking about mud suckers. Apparently you only need one. They never come off and they work even when they are dead so one will catch a lot of fish. You can catch 30 stripers on a clouser so I expect one clouser can out fish one mud sucker on fish count but maybe not total weight. It would be interesting to try the live bait just to see what I am missing.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

I bet it is pretty slow and cold fishing.



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Around 1970 I worked in a bait-n-tackle shop, West Capitol Rod & Gun, in West Sacramento where the new baseball diamond is now.


Naturally, we heard many good "fish stories" back in the day.


A guy was talking about fishing in the Delta in the winter for Stripers with Mudsuckers in Franks Tract.

He said they would anchor the boat and then put out some live Mudsucker/Bullheads?

They said they would pull a bunch of line off the reel and make coils of line on the bottom of the boat.

When all the coils were gone, they would set the hook.



I think years ago they were called "bullheads" but maybe now are called "mudsuckers."


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Here is the special double bull head hook they used decades ago in the Delta and Bays for Stripers in the Winter.

https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/must...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

[lee s.]

A Bull-head has horns and a mudsucker does not. I THINK they are both of the sculpin family though. We used to catch sturgeon occasionally on mudsuckers too.
....lee s.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Yes Lee, We have to be pretty old to remember some of this old fishing info.

[Tony Buzolich]

John,

That would be a perfect size for baking whole. I'd bring one home like that and my mom would tell me to go scale it, leave it whole but cut the head off. She'd take it then and rub olive oil all over it, stuff it with onions, maybe peppers, and tomato sauce with lots of garlic. Put it in a baking dish and pop it in the oven. Yummm, Striper Cacciatore. I loved that even as a kid.
Tony

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

In the 1950s and 1960s when Tony and I were youngsters there were lots of Stripers in the Sacramento River.


Down in the "Pocket" area in south Sacramento, my friend Roger Valene's family had a farm on the Sacramento River.

That was all farms then and now it is all houses. Terry Thomas's and Jim Silva's families had farms down that way too.


One day Roger invited me to go to the farm with him and fish off their little ~30' dock that came right off the levee.

On top of the dock was the back seat of an old car bolted down so you had somewhere to sit.

On the edge of the dock in front of you were old telescoping metal car antennas with a bend at the top to put your rod on.

Back then many fished by balancing their rods with the tip up with a sliding sinker and fresh sardine fillets.

It was the spring run and we caught a bunch of Stripers, with the largest around 15#.

[John H]

Those are pretty good stories. In my mind I can see the car seat and the bent car antennae with the fishing rod on it.

My mom is always telling me stories and of course I have heard them all many times but always listen. She is reliving her life through telling me the stories and I don’t want to ruin that for her.

Speaking of moms baking fish, one of her stories is when her dad speared a carp in the ditch with a pitch fork. Her mom refused to cook it. Something along the lines of we may be dirt poor German farmers in Iowa but we are not eating carp. I think they ate bullheads a lot. The whole family went out at night. The kids slept in the car and I expect her dad drank beer and caught bullheads. In the morning at home the kids job was to hang the bullheads from nails, pull the skin off and clean them up. She was the oldest and I expect she did most of the work. I think they mostly ate potatoes, eggs and milk so some variety in the diet was welcomed.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

My 4 grandparents were all born around 1885 so back then fish and game were part of their diet.


My dad's grandparents were from the German-Swiss Alps and came to America around 1910.

I would shoot them cottontail rabbits that I cleaned and skinned. They loved them because they ate them in Switzerland.

I would also give Striper fillets to my grandparents.


It is nice to listen to the elderly tell stories even if you have heard them before.


This is how the indigenous people passed down their history with the elderly members telling old stories around the campfire.


That is why there is something magic about sitting around a campfire with family or friends in the wilderness.