Save
Our Stripers!
www.saveourstripers.org
We need our chamber members help to defeat proposed legislation to deregulate the striped bass. A Kern County assembly woman has introduced legislation to open them to unlimited take, no size limit, commercial fishing, etc. as retaliation to our efforts to protect our delta water. If you feel this will affect your members businesses please visit the site and sign on in opposition: www.saveourstripers.org.
If you have more questions, write or visit the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance at www.calsport.org. Note that all fishing organizations in our region and our state oppose this legislation. Our Department of Fish and Game disagrees with the premise of this legislation and is currently fighting a similar attack on our striped bass fishery in court. Your support in opposition is CRITICAL in helping to crush this legislation before it has a chance to ruin our fishery and harm your business!
FishDelta.Com - Fish Reports
FishDelta.com is a new Delta Chambers member. We will now be adding the link to their fishing reports each week on this page. Some of the reports are duplicates. CLICK HERE to read the FishDelta Reports.
Also, for those missing the old Delta Chambers Fish Forum, you can now go to FishDeltaBuzz and participate in their fishing forums. Click Here
Delta
Bank Fishing
by Roland “Innovate”
Aspiras
No report this week.
Roland
“Innovate”
Aspiras
Roland's Fishing Blog
Email
Isleton Area
by Can Nguyen -- Bob's Bait Shops
Finally, the rainy week has came throughout entire western states including California with at least three storms coming back to back that brought a huge amount of water to the reservoirs. Snow pack was also from 65% last week to over 90% now. Likely, the weather will be good during this weekend.
Fishing for striped bass and sturgeon was slow for the entire Delta including Bay Point, Sherman Island, and Decker Island, up to Liberty Island. Most good size sturgeon reported from Freeport up to Colusa area. Striped bass was caught in South Mokelume River on live bait in Wimpy's Marina and around New Hope Landing.
Normally after the big storms the river will be full of debris, logs, and tree branches. It will be difficult to fish in such conditions. However anglers, who patiently fish in these conditions, will have more chances to get a good size sturgeon. The sturgeon fishing season would be best starting from this weekend in Isleton area, Cache slough, Rio Vista Bridge. Now is a good time to check all sturgeon fishing gear including fishing line, sturgeon leaders, sturgeon hooks and even fishing reel. Lubricate the fishing reel so it will help to land a fish easier. Fishing line should be replaced if it is over a year old. Many anglers regret while fighting for sturgeon and suddenly the fishing line breaks. Sometimes, the fishing reel gets stuck and the angler has to pull the line in order to land the fish.
Baits for sturgeon are grass shrimp, ghost shrimp, pile worm, salmon roe, or lamprey eel. Sometimes, sturgeon bites on cut shad or sardine.
Are you ready yet? One more thing keep in mind that sturgeon bites very good in light rain condition. So don’t be afraid about fishing during the raining day. Best luck to you and have a great coming weekend.
Antioch-Oakley
Area
by Chris Lauritzen -- Lauritzen Yacht
Harbor
I felt like a Big Dog on Monday being what appeared to be the only boat out on the water.
The barometer had dropped to its current perch of 29.50 and staying steady the past two days. Since this rain and wind stuff started we have received 1.20 inches of rain here at the harbor in the West Delta. Since this morning at 3:00 am we have received .68 inches of rain.
After two days of storms, the wind has been out of the ESE most of the time, sometimes turning to the south with a wind velocity of 18 – 35 mph at the peak of the wind cycle. There was even a period today when we saw blue skies and the wind was coming out of the west for a very short period of time with blues skies here at the harbor. There were very big rain clouds to our north and our south.
The east south east is a very favorable storm pattern for us here at the harbor the wind is blowing across land for the most part so the wind does not have the ability to gain the same strength as it does blowing from the west or the pounding that we get from the north.
There are boats in our dry storage area where the rain water has pooled up to the point where there might be as much as 10 – 20 gallons of water being held by some of these boat covers. If you have a trailerable boat, whether it is in your back yard or at a marina, please make sure that the drain plug is out of the boat and that the bow of the boat is higher then the stern so that you do not end up with a flooded boat to the point where the water is up over the top of the engine starter and alternator. No matter how many times we warn folks someone always forgets to take the drain plug out.
There is some good news to all of this short term dreariness. Rain water run off is starting to puddle up a little so that we can replenish some of ground water. More importantly, Shasta Dam is currently, as of Tuesday evening, being filled up at the rate of 4 feet in the past 24 hrs. and Oroville Dam has come up 2 feet in the past 24 hours.
The highest inflows into Shasta Dam came at the rate of 66,324 CFS (cubic feet per second) and inflows into Oroville came in at a much slower rate of 15,000 CFS. At least Oroville is coming up.
Closer to home, the upper Sacramento River is starting to flow a little with a current velocity of 19,500 CFS at Verona with is where the Feather River empties into the Sacramento River above the City of Sacramento River. That crest of water at Verona should be down to the Rio Vista Bridge in the next 24 to 36 hours. A little faster water should make sturgeon fishing great.
I went for a boat ride on my boat Monday to view the San Joaquin and Sacramento River to see how muddy the water was how much debris there was in the water and see if there were any sturgeon jumping out of the water.
The water yesterday was still very clear with the exception of just a little localized run off. There were no trees drifting out on man channel on either channel, but the water is high enough up that most of the debris that has been stored up along levee shore line is ready to be released when the water gets just a little higher so look out for crap in the water when boating.
As I mentioned the barometric pressure is pretty low. That causes the run off and the (tide) to back up. That is one reason why they are passing out sand bags in most of downtown Martinez, at least that is what they were doing Tuesday.
If you’re going to boat this weekend make sure that you watch out for floating debris in the water and entire trees especially on the Sacramento River.
If you’re planning on fishing this weekend, you should put out more scope on your anchor line so that you don’t drift away or be carried with the current. This time of year you should put out 3 or maybe 4 – 1 scope on your anchor line. On a 4-1 scope if you are in 20 feet of water you should put out 80 feet of anchor line.
Walt and I will be working the ISE show in Sacramento on Thursday January 21st. We will be working the Delta Chambers of Commerce. We’ll have a few fish pictures and a couple of NOAA charts to looks at. See you there!
Chris Lauritzen
Lauritzen's
Yacht Harbor
Website
Guest
Report by
Dale
"Fishwisher" Gillespie
Look for Dale's guest reports on future postings.
Dale "Fishwisher"
Dale's
Fishing Blog
Email