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