Antioch-Oakley
Area
by Chris Lauritzen -- Lauritzen Yacht
Harbor
By now many of you have heard that the Diamond Classic Catch and Release Sturgeon Derby in Martinez last weekend was a hudge success.
A reminder that there is one more sturgeon derby (the Original Super Bowl Sturgeon Derby) at McAvoys in Bay Point is this coming weekend Super Bowl Weekend. I’ll get to that in a minute.
My hat goes off the Steve Talmadige skipper of Flash Fishing Charters, Craig, Harbormaster at Martinez Marina and his entire harbor staff and the crew at the Martinez Bait Shop. It’s all about customer service and they did a proper job. I want to thank the eight charter boat captains who participated in the hour and a half long question and answer period there is always something new to learn from them.
One of the younger captains said it best, that if you want to learn how to do a better job of catching sturgeon, go out on one of their charters and learn from the pro’s. I couldn't agree with them more.
Whether your launching at the Martinez Marina and heading out for sturgeon, stripers or salmon unless you spend as many hours on the water as the charter captains do it takes years to figure out how to fish the body or water you are fishing at. The reason I say that is in the old days (40 ago) there were a lot more fish in numbers to fish for than there are now so you could count on luck a little more then than you can now.
Highlights of the derby. There are 406 anglers who purchased tickets for the derby and I believe that is a new record. There was a new category for kids, 15 years of age and younger. A total of 76 kids entered the kids derby. They did not have to pay to play but were awarded some great drawing prizes just for catching a fish.
First place cash prize went out to Shawn St. Gormain weighing in a 49 inch sturgeon for his efforts and he received 35% of the total pot, so he went home with a cash prize of $3,596.00. The total pot reached was $10,276.
I fished the derby with my brother-in-law Cliff Lane, his brother Kenny Lane, and my buddy Jim Green. I would blame the fact that we did not have any hook ups on the fact that my sister Margaret packed a great lunch for all of us but packed bananas in the sandwich stuff. We spent most of our day around the area where the Glomar Exploryer used to be moored in Suisun Bay. We saw fish hook ups around us. I did find fish on the bottom with my fish finder but could not get anything to bite.
The best part of the entire day was the fact that we had virtually no wind or waves all day long. Even if you weren’t catching a fish it was a great day to be out taking in a few rays of sun and perhaps taking a nap or two while listening to the VHF radio for all of the guys that were catching fish.
Fast forwarding to this weekends Original Super Bowl Sturgeon Derby. It starts at 7:00 am with the roll of the wheel to determine the target length of the fish to get closest to. That size will be announced on VHF radio channel 68 a few minutes after 7:00 am. Then it’s off to the races. The derby will conclude at 1:00 pm on Sunday so you have plenty of time to get your boat out of the water cleaned up and in time to watch the start of the Super Bowl.
It is a complete madhouse so make sure that you are at a bait shop early to pick up your bait for the weekend. Good luck and be safe while you are out there.
On to striper fishing. It’s still a pretty tough bite overall due to the fact that the water temperature on both the Sacramento and San Joaquin River is still below 50 degrees. There are a few fish being caught but it is like pulling teeth to get them to bite. You just really have to put your time in moving around until you find some fish on the fish finder then either spoon them or use live bait so you could get a hook up.
This Thursday February 2, we find out the fate of our industry as it relates to striper fishing and every other kind of fishing in Central/Northern California at the fish and game commission meeting in Sacramento starting at 8:30 am. You are going to see high stakes gambling at it’s best with attorneys for water districts from Southern California telling the commission why the stripers are bad for salmon and Delta Smelt. The are going to say that the reason that there are no salmon in the system is not because they take too much water for the system but because the non native stripers are eating up all of the salmon.
If you Google the history of striped bass in California you will find that it was the California Fish and Game Commission that in 1879 introduced stripers from the east coast as a possible commercial enterprise. Not only did they introduce them once but twice so that they got going. By around 1910 or so they harvested over 1 million pounds stripers in a single year and the salmon did just fine.
If you have the time please go to the meeting in Sacramento on Thursday to be a voice. See politics at it’s best or worst as it may be. See you on the water
Chris Lauritzen
Lauritzen's
Yacht Harbor
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