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.

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Dan Mathisen
Email & Website

Delta Bank Fishing
by Roland “Innovate” Aspiras

Stripers once again have been the top bet in the metro Sac area with good fishing happening inside city limits.  From Clarksburg, Freeport, Garcia Bend, Miller Park, Discovery Park on up to Knights landing, anglers are bagging schoolie sized stripers to 10 pounds. The top baits have been sardines, anchovies, pile worms and blood worms.

I took a short 3 hour trip with my fiancé this past Sunday to try my luck and only drew a few hits from sardines as the tide conditions were quite unfavorable. The weather however, was quite warm despite the windy conditions.

My parents took out the boat today (Tuesday) to Discovery Park to try their luck at a linesider and did quite well. Soaking sardines, in total they bagged 10 stripers, 6 legal fish with a 10 pound kicker fish in the mix with the rest being shakers. They also missed several hard hits and broke off 4 others. After I’m done with my report, I’m going to pick up some fresh striper!

Sturgeon has (finally) taken a backseat to the stripers, however its still a good bet. Verona, Knights Landing and Grimes are still the top locations with ghost shrimp, pile worms and eel being the best baits.

Down south, boaters that aren’t afraid to fight swells and whitecaps are pulling fish from Montezuma Slough, Little Cut and Big Cut.

Yesterday (Monday), my boss Max Bubon along with my other coworkers, Eric Dees and Derek Lozano, booked a trip with Kevin Yost - captain of the Lucky Strike. We fished inside of Little Cut and Big Cut with roe and grass shrimp. After missing multiple hits off the bat, Max finally hooked into a fish, but the fight was cut off suddenly after the fish took off and got the line hung up in the propellers. Eric followed shortly with a massive hookset and brought in a 57 inch fish – his first sturgeon ever. He had a hard time lifting his arms after he landed the fish. I was next, setting the hook on a good bite. The fish came to the boat quick – I thought it was a striper. Then, as the fish came within a few feet from the boat, he took off on a 20 yard run, jumped two times and finally went belly up. We tried for several more hours to capitalize, but all of our swings came up empty handed. Kevin is a class act with a beautiful boat and top of the line equipment. I would definitely recommend his fishing expertise to anyone looking to book a trip for sturgeon. He can be reached at 707-301-8050, or check him out at www.luckystrikefishing.com.

Shad fishing is starting to heat up on the Old Sacramento River with Freeport and Discovery Park kicking out a few males. Shad Darts have been the best bet, thrown carolina rigged and a 1 ounce sinker. Anglers are launching this rig as far as they can, and reeling back as slow as they can. On the American, a few fish are starting to pop up on the lower and middle sections of the river. Anglers are using 1.5 inch grubs in various colors threaded onto a 1/32 ounce jig head, setup on a carolina rig. A ¼ ounce weight is the norm, however varying the weight to the speed of the current will be needed. Again, anglers are slowly reeling back the rig, sometimes bumping the bottom.

Shad fishing will only get better as we head into the month of May, so make sure you get out there!

Do you have any questions or comments and have e-mailed me in the past but didn’t get a response? My old e-mail address in the last month has had so much spam that deciphering what was legit and what wasn’t was starting to become a pain. From now on, send me your questions, reports and comments to fishinnovate@gmail.com, and I’ll make sure to get back to you as soon as I can.

To all, have a fun time on the banks, and make sure you pick up after yourself so the next person can enjoy the spot you just fished.

Roland “Innovate” Aspiras
Email

lsleton Area
by Can Nguyen -- Bob's Bait Shop

No report this week.

Can
Email & Website

Antioch-Oakley Area
by Chris Lauritzen -- Lauritzen Yacht Harbor

Fisherman fishing the West Delta continue to do well and if my garmin fish finder is telling the truth there are plenty of fish around.

High liner for the week comes from our very own Alex Soto of Antioch who caught a very nice 34 inch, 18 lb striper this past week in Sherman Lake in about 17 ft of water. Alex was using anchovies for bait.

Alex didn’t catch the most stripers, that honor goes to Pat Jones and his brother Brian. According to Pat they caught well over 100 stripers while fishing for small mouth bass on the Sacramento River. Brian observed a spot in the water where the water was boiling. 2 ½ hours later and sore arms they finally left for the day but made a couple of kids days by letting them in on the action.

As I have reported in the past, Pat is a mostly black bass guy but will also work on a striper for a change of pace. Pat wouldn’t give up his fishing spot other than to say that they got into the boil at 12:30 am and didn’t stop catching fish until 3:00 pm. Most of the fish were in the 15–18 inch range, although there were some fish that were in the 24 inch range. All of the fish were caught on a Rat–L-Trap.

There were two boys aged about twelve years old that were watching Brian and Pat catch all of the fish. Finally after about an hour or so one of the boys walked along the levee until he was within shouting distance of Pat and Brian. The boys David and Tony had been fishing with bobbers and worms and hadn’t had as much as a nibble. They asked Pat what they were fishing with. Pat rigged up a Rat–L– Trap on each one of the kids pole and told them where to fish and how to use a Rat–L–Trap. At the end of the day the kids were just as tired as the old guys.

Pat and Brian let the boys keep the Rat–L–Traps and you should have seen the grin from ear to ear. Pat and Brian you boys are a class act.

You’re not the only fisherman to boat 100 stripers. I just received an e–mail note from Joe Vieria of Chowchilla. It seems that he and buddy Tony Medeiros went fishing out of Joe’s Nitro on Monday April 21 and landed 100 stripers up 12 lbs. According to Joe they fished in the same general area from 1 pm to 6:00 pm using plastics for bait. Like Pat and Brian they had to stop fishing due to cramping -- arms must be nice. According to Joe they were fishing around the barges at buoy 25 on the San Joaquin River and probably made it up to the mouth of Three Mile Slough. The last note I received from Joe they were fishing in 2–10 feet of water which would put them in and around the tule patch just north of the barges.
 
Paul Wong and buddies continue to do well fishing for stripers on the San Joaquin River. Early this morning (Tuesday) April 29, 2008, Paul and company left the harbor before daylight. He was taking a chance as the wind was blowing pretty good by 11:00 am this morning.  We were seeing wind gusts in the 17–35 mph. Those winds have since passed by there is still a breeze. Luckily Paul was off the water by 8:30 am with three limits of stripers, the biggest being in the 12 lb range. Paul and his buddies use nothing but Rat–L-Traps for plugging. The fish continue to be males making a mess over everything when they get in the boat.

Water temperatures have really come up and with the warm weather we had this past weekend currently waters around the Antioch area seem to be the warmest. At the Antioch Boat Ramp, the water is in the 62.5 – 65.4 degree range. A little cooler is the water on the Sacramento River at the Rio Vista Bridge with a range of 62.6 – 64.0 degrees and in Martinez the range is 58.7 – 63.8 degrees.

I was just looking at a website on the north coast. Many fisherman are counting the weeks until the bottom fishing season. If you have time to read the article in the Contra Costa Times as well as read some of the posting at the north coast it looks as though the bottom fishing season may be short lived. It seems the DFG is now concerned about the blue rock fish population which means smaller quota of fish caught which means less fishing on the coast.

In closing, I have my own fishing report. This past Saturday we hosted the venue for jet ski races. This is the only time there will be a planned event at the harbor I promise. I spent all of Saturday afternoon out on my Wellcraft escorting boats around the race course. I had my garmin fish finder on the entire time. It recorded fish outside the harbor entrance all afternoon. I was marking fish in 10 feet of water as well as in 2 feet of water. I think there are plenty of fish to go around for a while. See you on the water.

Chris Lauritzen
Lauritzen's Yacht Harbor
Website