December Shad?

Went out to the port today with Deni. Got to a late start waiting on Deni to wake up we ended up getting on the water by 1230 or so. Anyways long story short on this one fish here for nothing fished there for nothing doing all of my usual stuff, but today I finally got some jigging spoons so I thought I'd give it a try. I just ran around the area looking for fish on the fish finder and tried there. I ended up getting this one fish in 40ft of water.



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Its a freaking American Shad! IN DECEMBER!!! I was blown away by it. I contemplated on throwing him back out with a hook in his ass but I didn't feel like dealing with it. Probably should have, but oh well. Needless to say we jigged pretty much the rest of the day till sun down for nothing else. I asked around and it seemed like all other fisherman were struggling today too. Glad we weren't the only ones. Hopefully it will pick back up soon.

Till Next Time Guys
Mark

Prize At Amador 12/13/11

Took the Boat back out today at Lake Amador to try some more trolling for trout. I had my co-worker Robert with me today. We finally had the same day off of work together. With listening to me talk about fishing to him for about roughly 30 hours each week, he was getting the urge to get back out to fish. He hasn't been in probably 8 years so now sounds like a good time to get back out. We got to the ramp at 0700 and got all of our trolling rods ready. I started off with a fire tiger grub with a chartuse power egg ahead of it.



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Robert did a white grub with a chartuse egg. We make a pass by the damn and the north shore to start off with since it was right there. Nothing wanted to bite there though. We get pass the spillway and as were watching a bank angler land a fish on the spillway Roberts rod doubles over. Robert was suffering from ADD having never been on a boat before he was playing around with the fish finder and didn't see the bite. I told him to grab his rod and he ran over there grabbed it and fish on baby! He gets his fish in and Rob has his first Amador cut bow.



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We go on a little further and Rob gets a second one not much later. About now I'm starting to see some fish surfacing around us so I grab my UL rod and start casting my tube jig towards the swirls. I end up getting a decent amount of hits, but I couldn't stick anything. Our trolling bite turns off on us but fish are still jumping everywhere, so we decided to cut the motor and just drift through them. I drifted a white power worm while I casted my jig around at swirls and Robert casted a kastmaster towards jumping fish. I ended up missing more fish and Rob stuck one more on the kastmaster, damn man this newbie is kicking my ass. At least I'm serving as a good guide. We drift for a while longer for some more short strikes and I ended up losing one.

We noticed after a while it seemed the surface action calmed down so we went back on the troll. We trolled over towards Jackson. I didn't think there would be any fish back there yet but man its a cool country and I thought Robert would like to see it. On the way we got saw some more surface action going on and I kept tossing my jig at em and finally I land my first fish of the day! Not only was it my first fish, but this bad boy had a tag on him!



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Nice prize for me and a fish well worth the wait and frustration of missing so many other fish before. I ended up getting two free nights of camping for this tag. That's 50 bucks I don't have to spend if/when I decide to go camping at lake Amador, awesome.

We trolled all the way back to Jackson Creek to find a small trickle of a creek.



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Needless to say there were no fish here. Back to the main lake we go! We Developed a pattern of trolling up wind then drifting back while casting lures. We had lots of bites and caught fish both ways, but it seemed like we were having better success on the drift.



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While we were drifitng I noticed all of the guys out in their pontoons waving their sissy sticks around seemed to be doing the best. I could hear them across the lake talking to each other "I just got my 10th one Bob."

Around 1500 we had 9 fish in the box and Robert had to get back home so we decided to call it quits from there. Got back to the ramp and drove up the the cleaning station.

Now for those of you guys who don't know I am a Meat Cutter at the Galt Supermarket. Robert here has taught me most of what I know and how to cut most of the meat at work, so here I got to teach him how to fillet a fish. Kind of cool me getting to teach him how to cut something.



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He did really good for his first few attempts. Having plenty of experience with knife helped I'm sure.

So the day ended with 9 fish caught. 5 for me, 1 trolling on the grub and 4 on my crappie jigs, along with another 4 lost. Robert ended up getting 4, 3 of them trolling with his white grub, and 1 on a kastmaster, along with another 2 lost on a kastmaster. Great day on the water

Good ol' Slamador proves true again with providing me a good mess of fish.



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Average was about 2lbs today some 3lbers were in the mix as well. Cool to get a new person out on the water with me, and as always it was just great to get out.

Till Next Time Guys
Mark

Sacramento Port 12/11/11

Had a day off and I called up Garrett and I told him it was time to get back out to the port. After reading Matt's report I was dreaming about striper boils all night. Picked Garrett up early and headed out for the port. Got to the Parking lot around 0450 and started unloading. Just encase we dragged all of the stuff down to the water to set it up there encase a boil started by the boat ramp while we were setting up like it has done so many times before. I started getting stuff together and right as I attached the pump the get the pontoons inflated I looked over at the water and I thought I saw a bit of disturbance. I looked like there was just a slight breeze blowing across the water, I asked Garrett if he saw it and he said yes. We looked closer and we realized it was a school of shad jumping for their lives. Grabbed our swimbaits and began tossing towards the school. Same thing as last time I let it sink a few ft down just below the school of shad and first cast BAM fish on!



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Decent shaker to start the morning with and we are still shore bound. Very next cast I hook up again and this time its a keeper.



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Measured out to be another 19 1/2 incher. Good keeper size for me. Cut him to bleed him out.

Sure enough after that Garrett was looking at me and asking what is it your doing that I'm not? I explained to him he had to let it sink down a few feet before reeling it in. This whole time Garrett was ripping it in across the surface. Next cast Garrett let it sink down and sure enough he hooked up.



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The boil stopped after that so I went back to pumping up the toon while Garrett kept trying to get some more fish. Garrett was getting some more taps here and there, but he never stuck anything else. By the time we got everything together with the toon and with the delay of the fish catching we didn't launch until 0540. We took off looking for the boils Matt was on yesterday. We found some small fish surfacing on the west bank of Washington Lake, but they weren't really boils and they wouldn't touch our swim baits. We never found anything special so we headed back into the barge canal to maybe do some trolling or casting to hopefully get the rod bending again.

We trolled from the bridge all the way back to the locks without a bite so we stopped there and decided to cast towards the shore line. I stuck with my swim bait, but Garrett decided to give a jig a try. He had a 1 ounce P-Line jig that he tried jigging with. Not after too long I had a few short taps and so did Garrett. Garrett ended up getting a couple shakers not after too long. Then he hooked into something nice, his fish came up and it looked like a nice sized striper. As I'm looking down at his fish, reeling in my swim bait, I felt my swim bait stop dead in its tracks. I set the hook and we got a double baby!!! My fish felt nice too, I took a look though and as it came flying out of the water I saw a big flash of brown and I realized it was a salmon!!! I've hooked a salmon on a swim bait.

Thinking about this now this is way to backwards. Garrett and I have a double right now, He has a striper on a jigging spoon and I have a salmon on a swim bait. I'm pretty sure its supposed to be the other way around, but hey I'm happy with it! We got our fish in and I'm still baffled I got a salmon to hit my swim bait.

We got the fish in and its time to break out the scale. My salmon weighed in at 14lb and Garrett's striper 5lbs. We went on fishing and not more then a minute later Garrett is hooked up again. I saw a slight flash and I thought I saw brown, no way could it really be a second salmon? Then that beast came flying out of the water and sure enough now Garrett had a salmon of his own.

After all of that action man Garrett and I were happy campers we each had a keeper striper and a salmon. We tried jigging and casting for a bit longer for nothing. We decided to go back on the troll after that to see if we could get a few more bites.

Sure enough we did and we got a few more of these little guys.



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I planned on staying out later, but both of us were tired and we figured with the catch we had for dinner we were pretty satisfied with the day. Ran the toon back in and called it a day. Snapped some pics of the catch at the ramp



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Garrett's Salmon ended up being an 18lb Buck by the way.



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Of course everyone at the ramp had to ask us "where/how you get the salmon? I didn't know they were still around." Most of em didn't believe me when I told them I got mine on a swim bait just tossing for stripers.

I then too realized I didn't bring a cooler big enough to put salmon in. Oh well its cold today into the bed of the truck they go.



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Hey look a "Salmon Bed" hahahahaha sorry had to do that one.

After we got everything packed up we decided to make a few more cast off the bank just cause. I ended up getting one more shaker and Garrett ended up getting a small largemouth throwing a clouser off of the ol' sissy stick.



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That was it for today. As you can see it was foggy as heck and it never lifted. seemed like it got worse as the day went on. Left the water around 1030.

I've never kept a salmon this dark ever before since I'm usually done fishing for salmon at the end of september. The Meat came out a bit whiter then I'm used to seeing it, but it looks good. Can't wait to get it in the smoker.



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I've got lots of roe now too.



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I think I've got another secret weapon now for next time I got out for Mr. Sturgie. Wishful thinking.

Till Next Time Guys
Mark

Flounder on the Delta

My dad and I are still after our Sturgeon. Came out to the Delta today to give it another go. Launched out of Brannan Island around 1230. Found a spot we liked at the power lines in 31 feet of water.



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My dad said he was feeling good today. Finally after searching for it for sometime now our bait shops finally had grass shrimp (my dad's favorite bait). My dad started off with that and I stuck with my eel and shad/sardine combo. We both started getting bites within 10 mins. After a few missed hook sets and a bunch of nibbles I ended up sticking a 8 inch shaker striper. Water temp was a chilling 49 degrees. With the cold water bites weren't very aggressive shakers or not. After a few missed swings for my dad he ends up sticking a fish too. His fish was a little bit more exciting though.




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Old man got a Starry Flounder. Finally he let me take his picture for once.

Cool catch for sure. Not to often we come across one of these. People tell me they are good eating so in the cooler he went. We kept missing hits here for a few hours then after a while out bites just stopped. We moved up river to shallower water where my dad managed a few more hits and a 16 inch shaker striper. After that the sun went down and we decided to call it quits. I did see one over sized sturgeon roll. Damn is it cool seeing those massive things breach out of the water.

Off the at sundown. Got home and laid this guy down on the cutting board.



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Now how the hell am I suppose to clean this guy? Luckily out of curiosity and boredom on youtube I've looked up how to clean a halibut. Figured it would be a similar process. Sure enough my first time at I didn't think I did too bad.



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Thing was good too. Similar taste to rockfish almost.

All in all slow day on the delta, still no stugie for us, but we'll keep trying.

Till Next Time Guys
Mark

Camanche South Shore Trout Pond 11/30/11

Original plan was to wake up early-ish to go back out to the Delta and give sturgeon another try. Was watching the news last night and saw that the weather was switching from fog to wind. Told my dad about the weather change and he nor I wanted to be out on the Delta in the Tracker in 35 mph winds gust, so instead of going out to Rio Vista we decided to hit the Trout Pond for the first time this year. I've been seeing that its been planted a few times this year, but haven't heard anything from it yet. Figured it was time to go out and see how it was doing.

We got on the water around 1300. Saw one guy out on his raft drifting around and 4 other bank anglers. Not to many people and they all left about an hour after we got there, so we basically had it all to ourselfs. Probably not a good sign that there weren't a lot of people, but my dad and I hate crowds anyways so were happy about it. As we were setting up We both saw a small trout jump about 40ft off of the bank. Good sign, knew there were fish here and they were on the surface. I really wanted to do my usual bobber set ups, but with the wind it just wasn't gonna work. My dad threw bait out on the bottom and was casting his rapala's. I tried the bobbers anyways, but the wind was just blowing them all over the place.

Needless to say I lost confidence in this and I got bored, so like I do when I usually get bored at the pond I grab my UL rod and my jig box and walk around the pond looking for cruisers. I walked around doing some fan cast here and there, but never got anything. I saw a few of these bouys around the pond.



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Something new. I don't know if you guys can read it or not but it says "Caution weed suppression blanket." Besides maybe a major snag I don't see why I need to be cautioned about it, but the idea seems sweet don't have to worry about the weeds as much anymore. Definitely makes a lot more water fishable providing more room for bank anglers and less snags.

Kept walking around the pond and finally I saw a few fish cruising next to the bank.



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Hard to see I know, but believe me they are there. I was throwing my jigs at em, I had one swing by and take a sniff at my jig, but I couldn't get one to commit. I Kept trying for about a half hour for nothing. I thought I needed something more enticing for them, luckily I had a secret weapon.

Ran back to the truck and grabbed this.



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One of the trout I kept from Amador yesterday had some roe in her. I bought some Pautzt's Fire Cure for my next salmon I caught, but that never happened, so I thought what the hell I can cure the trout roe and use that for something. I don't fish for Steelies and Salmon are a little too Dark now for me. I thought it would work great here instead.

By the time I came back though the fish I saw were gone. I scanned the banks looking for em and I found a school of about 10 fish circling around, even better. I free lined the roe right in the middle of the school. I had some come right up to it, but they wouldn't go for it right away. I tried doing a slow retrieve through the school, some followed and they got a little more aggressive, but they still wouldn't take it. Then I tried dragging it a long the surface of the water and I had 4 of them rise for it like a dry fly, but they all missed it. I tossed it back one more time and I felt a pick up on the line. I counted to 3 and set the hook fish on!

Guy put up a good fight, but I won in the end.



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Beautiful fish, I forgot how pretty Mt. Lassen fish were. The color on these fish are incredible.

Unfortunately he broke me off when I got him on the bank and I had to re-tie my egg loop knot and by the time I got that done and re-baited my school was gone.

I walked back over to my dad and I saw another school of about 20 fish swimming around. I threw the roe in there, they didn't want anything to do with it. Then I tried my jig and not even a single looker. I looked and one of those black birds with the name that I can't spell to save my life was hot on their asses. These fish were scared for their life's, so yea food was not the first thing on their mind.

Needless to say I couldn't get anymore bites after that. Got a new phone recently, thought I'd see how well the camera is on it.



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My usual resident ducks. The one on the top left my dad and I have actually named Grandpa because of his white feathers that make him look a little older then the others. He along with the other ducks have been here for years except for the female duck in the middle she became a new resident last year. Shows how much my dad and I fish the trout pond, we have names for and recognize the ducks in the pond.



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Resident Pelican



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Windy Pond



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My Dad checking his bait.



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Birds getting ready to roost up for the night.

Ended the day at sunset. My dad said he had a bite on a Kastmaster and that was it for him. Pond still needs a few more plants to get going, or a few less birds for that matter. Seems like me and other animals recently just aren't getting a long.

Conditions with the wind today weren't great, but it was good to see the pond again and it was great to get out as always.

Till Next Time Guys
Mark

Trolling Lake Amador 11/29/11

My buddy Jay (jfitalia) called me and said lets go fishing. Debated between stripers or trout. Figured I haven't been to Amador in a while and my school of stripers in the port moved off to idk where so trout it was. Jeremy had always told me how amazing grubs are trolling for trout, but I've never learned how to properly troll them, so Jay told me he would show me the ways of trolling Amador.

We got on the the water around 0700. Got out of the launch cove and started trolling around the dam and up the north shore. I got to say too man oh man was it foggy.



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We made a few circles around the area without a bite, so we decided to try a different section of the lake. We trolled further down the lake towards Mountain Springs. After we passed the spillway We started seeing fish surfacing everywhere all around us far and wide. We keep trolling through the schools without a bite, and with fish jumping all over the place and even only about 5ft from the boat my patience was running low. I decided to pull in one of my rods and get up on one of the bow of the boat and I decided to cast my jig towards the swirls of fish. Sure enough not much longer after I started this I got hit. I ended up missing a couple of hits before I stuck my first fish.



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The second I threw that fish in the live well I heard Jay say "Mark your rod!!!" I look behind me and my trolling rod with a fire tiger grub on it with a white power egg ahead of it was doubled over. I grabbed the rod and Fish on Baby!



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Couple of fish with in a few seconds hell yea!

Not much later Jay gets his fish on a orange grub.



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We kept making passes here getting 2 or 3 fish on each pass most on grubs some on me throwing jigs and Jay Got a few trolling a night crawler too.

Trolling speed .6-1.5mph
Scents threadfin shad and shrimp
Set backs we switched from 80ft to as close as 30ft back.

Unfortunatly I think my battery for the trolling motor is shot. Around 1100 or so my battery started dieing, but we managed to keep it going for a while longer. Off of the water around 1330. We must have boated close to 20 fish throughout the day.

The Live Well


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Once we found the fish the bite was pretty consistent throughout the day right up until the end when .5mph was the max speed on my trolling motor, and I'm pretty sure that was mostly just the wind pushing us.

Great day on the water and awesome to learn a new productive way of fishing.

Till Next Time Guys.
Mark

Earning My Stripes Sacramento Port 11/19/11

Garrett has been begging me to take him out to the port to go after some stripers. I was slightly skeptical with the results I had trolling for them last week, but I decided it was worth a second shot. Plus with the recent rain maybe it will turn the bite on. Garrett told me he had a buddy nailing some out there on top water in the early AM. You know I'm all over that!!!

I unfortunately though am still not am an early morning person so I pulled an all nighter to make sure I was up in time. Got Garrett up early and pulled into the parking lot around 0500. Got the toon set up and walked down to the water and as we were walking down we saw shad jumping around everywhere and stripers were crashing on them right next to the bank. We dropped the toon where it was and you can bet we have spooks tied on. We toss to the boils and Garrett gets a nice swirl, but the fish never takes it. That's all we get though before the fish move off.

We launch the toon and go in the search of more fish. We try trolling around for a bit but as were trolling around we see some more fish crashing on some shad close to the bank. I stick with throwing my spook and Garrett tries a swimbait. Garrett is setting the hook every two seconds until he realizes that its the shad bumping and hitting his swimbait that he is setting the hook on. After a while though I managed to get a swirl on my spook. First swirl the fish missed, second the fish bumped the lure, I got jumpy and swung for a hookset, but I stopped half way through knowing the fish hadn't taken the lure. Luckily I didn't ruin my whole cast, I did two more jerks and boom. Saw that swirl, felt the weight and fish on baby.

I draw first blood on top with this nice keeper.



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Silly me I forgot my tape measure and my scale, so the length and weight goes unknown. Great fish though and that's I need to know.

Shortly after Garrett gets one on his swimbait.



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and another



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and another . . . .



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Hot Damn man swimbait is killing em I got to switch! Sure enough I do and I hook up.



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After that me and Garrett just chased the schools around the banks tossing the swimbaits at them and going to town on these fish.



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our first double



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and our second

We end up getting a total of 4 doubles and close to 10 fish each. After the sun gets high in the sky the fish stop crashing on the surface so we decide to go on the troll. We end up hooking a few but the bite was pretty much dead. With the stripers not bitting any more I decided we would run over and see if we could crank out some black bass.

I get to the cove and sure enough it didn't take long before I started hooking up throwing a shallow diving sexy shad crankbait.



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Trying for a couple of hours I ended up with catching about 8 with my largest being about 4lbs. Poor Garrett just didn't have the right lure the whole time casting to each hole first before me he only managed to catch one short fish and lose one in the 3lb range.

After running out of fishable water for the largemouth we decided to go back on the troll for some more stripers. We find a few more shakers here and there but nothing big.



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sucker swallowed that thing.

Saw Makattak when he was on his lunch break. He told us about some fish possibly being over in the locks just off of Jefferson so we decided to go over there and give it a try.

Nice seeing you and talking to you again Kevin.

We got down there and we saw a few swirls so we knew there were some active fish around. After a while of tossing swimbaits around Garrett and I manage a couple here.



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While we were fishing here I saw a guy come down throwing a gibs minnow for I was assuming salmon. After a short while though Garrett and I saw him catch what we thought was a shaker striper. From far away though we weren't really sure. I saw Garrett had a eye locked on it and he told me it was a shad. We got closer and the guy walked over to us held the fish out and asked us "Hey what kind of fish is this?" He had no idea though. Sure enough though middle of freaking November this guy caught a shad on a freaking gibs minnow. I'll tell you if I didn't see it then I never would have believed it.

After that though we went back on the troll for a few more fish. We ended the day with a total of 26 stripers between the two of us averaging 17-21 inches. Probably at least 15 of the fish being legal keepers. Got off of the water around 1430.

Most amazing day I have ever had at the port striper fishing. Can't wait to get back out there. I'll definatly have to start waking up eariler too to make sure I can get on the early morning top water bite.

Till Next Time Guys