Katz,
I have more years experience chasing stripers with conventional gear from my bass boat than I do with a fly rod.
Although a book could be written about the where and how to locate stripers in the Delta, tides have more to do with positioning the fish than anything.
For the depths fished with a fly rod, electronics are not very useful for FINDING stripers but invaluable for locating the structure stripers find and use to 1) ambush their prey and 2) travel. Once you find the spots they like, you can revisit these spots time and time again. When you learn, through experience, the times/tides the stripers are likely to be there, your apt to be more successful year after year.
On the other hand, I almost always use my electronics to locate schools of fish in deeper water (8-35ft) and use a technique called "spooning" or "jigging" with conventional gear to catch impressive numbers of stripers.
Now before you bash me for mentioning conventional gear, I want you to know two things:
1) I consider myself a fisherman, not a flyfisherman (I enjoy many different techniques) and I've been fishing with casting and spinning gear for stripers, steelhead, bass, shad and salmon much longer than I have with fly gear.
2) I don't know too many flyfishermen (one word?) that can say they've caught over 100 stripers (not a typo, that's 100+) 6lbs or better in a continuous 5 hour afternoon!
If you want to go out some time, I'd be glad to take you. I won't leave steelheading to pursue them, but when the large schools start to show up (mid-November/December) and the tides are favorable (tide charts are helpful to try and predict), I'm there!
All this is my personal opinion from personal experience having learned it over the years, not what I've heard... and my two cents worth.
I apologize for the long reply, you're probably sorry you asked.
Ron
fly: Very light artificial fly fishing lure of which there are two types: the dry fly which isn't supposed to sink the way it just did; and the wet fly, which shouldn't be floating up on the surface like that. An Angler's Dictionary.
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