HERO TO ZERO - Birthday Experiances on the CA DELTA

I wanted to share my Birthday Experience with you all -so I am here to embarrass myself and get your suggestions or thoughts on how this could have ended differently.

I fish the California Delta quite a bit, this is a tidal water fishery with over 1100 miles of fishable shoreline - Water temps were 75 - 76 - tide was low at 8:30 high at 12:30 with a 2.0 foot swing from low to high (not much movement) winds were stable NNW 5-10 overnight lows around 56 stable for two days coming out of three days prior of 100+ days and lows of 78.

On Friday (my birthday) my partner and I went back to a magical area of ours where Mark Keyes pulled a 15.77 frog fish this time last year 366days ago. 

We pulled into the area on Friday and threw Senkos down the inside weed lines and pulled two fours - I quickly told Mark to put the rods down and we need to go do some looking as we had a tournament on Saturday.  The FIRST thing we noticed was an 8lber suck down a bluegill - the SECOND thing we noticed were blue gill beds - lots of em and not the lil guys but the big bull bluegils; you know the ones that are bigger then your hands. I put the trolling motor on high and we began looking and fishing with our eyes this area was LOADED with big fish, several over 8 and a couple over 10 as well as enough 1-3 to put on a fish fry for a village – just unbelievable for a cove that is approx 300yrds around.   We fished the outer edge where the bigger fish were not just to see how to get them to eat – Frogs, Senkos, Tubes all produced fish – needless to say we were STOKED on the area – this is what fishermen dream of and we knew that we found our spot for our 6 hr tournament and that the event was ours to lose.

Game day we draw boat 36 (I just turned 36 on Friday) first flight (we wanted first flight for the outgoing tide) and we were the second boat out!  Luck is on our side – we get to our first spot and I start throwin the senko as Mark is workin the frog in the cheese – I connect with a rat and BOOM SPLOOSH wild commotion Mark has a frog fish on – BOOM BABY 5lber in less then 5 minutes, two more casts with the senko and I have 3lber (and we are not even in the best part of the cove)  we work our way down the grass line carefully dissecting each grass point and pocket – but something has changed our insideline has been blown back with the cheese – the mat has shifted and moved and the big bluegill are not on the bank only the lil guys.   I knew find the bluegill find the bass – so we slid out to the next open lane in the cheese – we find cruisers in the 6-7lb range throwing senkos and tubes in front of them to no avail – The Grass is sticky (dying angel hair grass) and the bass have hunkered down in the grass – we limited out on two Buba – Shot Fish and Three Senko Fish two pounders – we knew our big fish didn’t get up and swim out of the cove – they were there in the grass – just not active – the angel hair didn’t let us get our bait down to the fish and when you did get the bait down it was so slimed up it looked like a glob of goo.   We weighed in 12.5 lbs for our best five – the fish beat us this day, we had the right spot, the right size fish all around us – just couldn’t get a bait effectively to them.   So I ask – have you ever experienced this type of situation?  If so what did you do to solve the problem?   If not what would you have done differently? 

Delta Days

For some "The Boys of Summer" means baseball - to me its time on The California Delta - there is nothing like this body of water west of the Mississippi, three Major rivers run from the Sierra Nevadas, meet to form The Delta and out through the SF Bay this fishery is the life force that brings Salmon to their migration creeks, Stripers running, Sacramento Shad, Sturgeon, Small Mouth, Spotted Bass, Catfish, Blue Gil, Crappie, a commercial Shad and Crawdad fishery and the result of it is HUGE strong Large Mouth Bass.  This river system is a heartbreaker that takes me to my highest of highs to my lowest of lows and some times from one day to the next it is truly an awesome fishery that will test any anglers mettl Armed with 2 swimbaits, a crank, a chatterbait, zara spook, and WADDA JIG, flip rod with a Danny Miller Punching weight and a small compact Robo Worm Pitchin craw for the unxpected bass - If you have not seen the Danny Miller Punchin Weight ya need to check it out!  Even if you are not punchin a 2oz through hyacinth and extra thick vegetation this is a killer weight for flippin lay down tulles /reeds grass pockets, milfoil, hydrilla, etc... today I started with a 3/4oz miller punch weight just enough to get ease the weight down through the lay down tulles and fold over grasses - I wanted that lighter weight to control the fall of the bait - with a snelled Owner 4/0 j hook i am good to go!  This bait works by flippin or pitchin your bait to the cover lifting the rod tip up to put the weight on end  and she goes bloop and slides on down - gone are the days of blasting a 2-2.5oz steel rocket 30+feet up into the air to get it to crash down on mama bass - now i can scale down my weight and slide the bait precisley to where she lives!

Now for how the day played out - Weather was overcast, slight drizzel and small breeze (2mph) the first two hours which was the last two hours of the incoming tide.  I immiedatly retied the spook to a buzzbait and our first spot was a great stop of buzzbait fish - nada - i changed the buzzbait to a blade realizing that they are not going to break the surface today.   Second stop was a rip rap main point into a slough raining steadily now with a 10mph , throwing up tight I had three bumps on the chatter bait, started casting out to 12' working the grass tops and hooked into a 3, then through the swimbait over the same area and connected with a 2.5 - Mark was throwing the crank up tight and found out that those bumps I was getting were short fish - but the crank vacummed them up and got into some keepers too.   Ran rock points and eddies for about 2.5 hours with bites all on the outside over 12-14' no fish up tight, tulles needed to be near by but couldnt get the worm fish in the tulles.    Top of the tide in W.S. Mark connected with a nice 4lber on a crank bait - isolated tulle on the inside of a point out about 6' from the tulle - this was key for the bigger fish - think troughs.    I wanted to check some water down south so made the run across the San Joaquin Delta only to find the winds are now BLOWIN 35mph - the area was choked with weeds and there was no place to really get out of the wind - ran back to W.S. for the rest of the day - winds blowin 35mph - gusting to 45mph

Keys of the day - Rip Rap, Grass Flats - Isolated Tulles nearby - Covered Water, if we didnt get bit in within 5 min - GONE - my hypothosis is that these fish are in all 3 stages of spawn STILL - the 's had the tail tell signs of being bucks not bitches - although they very well could have been fry guard with the wind up its hard to see any fry in the water.  Water temp 62-63 felt much warmer, air temp 64 winds WINDY, Rainy -3 tide

Fishing the Delta -

Tomorrow begins my two day tour on The California Delta with a follow up stop next Friday24th and Saturday 25th.  General reports will be posted on Sunday and details after the 25th - SORRY buts i gots to win dis one and cant spill all the beans.

Saturday is a falling barometer (thats good) over night low expected at 54degrees ( a 4 degree drop from the previous evening) Day time temp of 78 (7 degree drop from previous day) NW winds 20mph for friday night, SWS winds 10-14 late afternoon Saturday - High Tide is at 7 and low at 3

Starting June 15 - Sept15 the 6 Hour tournament rule is in affect so a shorter window of time to catch some big healthy pigs.   The goal WIN - the gameplan...... keep an open mind - starting line up

Topwater
Frog
Chatterbait
Spinnerbait
Flip
Flip
Senko
Dropshot
Shakey Head

Ah the kitchen sink - as you can see by the starting line up I am a junk fisherman. 

No Lip Fish

I caught this fish on the Delta on 6-5-11, the sound quality is pretty bad because of the wind...but check this fish out he was just under 4 and his top lip was cut sheer off - I mean down to the bone clean strait line.  As you can see there is a Marina in the background and my only thought is this guy was suspended under a boat when the captain decided to start it!    Pretty funny video as I thought Mark was taking a picture and it turned out to be a video.  Fishing report from this day will be out in about a week so check back to http://fishingasarookie.blogspot.com/ on 6-18-11

Folsom Lake Fishing Report - CAST for Kids

May 21st 2011 marked Folsom Bass Teams 5th annual CAST for Kids event held on Folsom Lake California  Folsom Bass Team in conjunction with Capitol Autism hosted over 32 kids and families for a wonderful day of fishing, BBQ, trophies and a day that everyone will remember.  Thank you for all that participated!

A BIG thank you to Mother Nature who was kind enough to give us a good day of fishing, Folsom Lake is currently full of water, meaning the willows have water on em and the fish LOVE hangin in these willow trees.  The morning was overcast with a slight breeze coming out of the east, i made a quick run to a cove that had willow trees and worked my way down the bank First willow flip a Yum Dinger in Watermelon Seed and have a fish just swim off with it, set the hook to pass the rod over to my kid and oops she came off.  I quickly changed hooks and went to the next willow in about 14' flip the senko and BOOM fish on a chuncky 3lb spot, flip the next willow for nada and the next for a 2lb spot.  The key here was that the Yum Dinger had to be up against the tree trunk on a vertical fall, the trees in 14' - 10' held fish the shallower ones not so much.  The other observation is these fish have not fully spawned yet!

Later in the afternoon I was able to get out with Dick and fished a swimbait for the rest of the afternoon - what i witnessed was something else first cast on the swimbait and a BIG smallie was tracking it - second cast another cruizer working down the bank I would bang the swimbait into the rocks and these fish just jumped on the swimbait - Unfortunatly it was a new bait for me and I was not dialed into it - but by the end of the afternoon we saw multiple 4's and 5's cruising the 10' ledge coming into the coves - these girls are just moving up come June 17th full moon you have best be on your best water cause I believe the fish will be on a big move to the bank!    Folsom is great this time of year, take a kid fishing.

California Delta - Low Tide Fishing part 1

I am definatly no guru on the California Delta and im learning each and every trip out there, the Low Tide can be a mystery for many fisherman who fish tidal waters. Just hours ago you were flipping into the Tulles up on the bank and wackin fish, now comes the dread low tide and those tulles have inches of water on them leaving one to scratch thier head..."where did all my fish go?" I still find myself asking this question but what really helped me advance was donning a new lense to look through - and I wanted to share it, cause it just may work for you too.

The Lense I use for looking at Low Tide situations is to look at the grass lines the same way I  look at a topo map - what i mean by that is if you flatten out the grass and dont look at it as grass - just look at the structure aspect and topography.

 Fig 1   John Crews Fishing The Delta on Low Tide                                                         Fig 2  Topo Map     

   Compare the above two pictures look down at the grass you will begin to see points, dropoffs, edges and ledges - you will see structure in terms of rocks and tulles, stickups, and ditches - once you start recognizing the vegetation (and you dont need to know it by name) you will notice changes in vegetation - i treat these like i do rock transitions on lakes - the interesting thing about the vegetation and starting to learn it is that you will see that certain vegetation likes certain bottom composition - like hippie grass likes sandier areas.

The other thing to do is to pull the boat off the bank and not just the bank the flat that you are on as well so that your boat is in 10-14' and look from there Fig1(see how crews is well outside the grass line) - low tide is more of a mental hurdel then anything else. I dont have it all figured out but when i started looking at it through the eyes of topography it started to make more sense for me.  It was no longer a bunch of grass clumps, they started to take familiar shapes and forms that I could easily interpret - main lake points, secondary points, humps, creek channels all on a macro level!

I highly encourage anyone who is "stuck" when fishing low tide to plan your fishing days for the majority of the day to be on the low tide look around and embrace it - you will start to see a whole different fishery and by learning the low tide you will greatly improve your fishing skills on the high tide. 

A great guide and a good friend Andy "Cooch" Cuccia has an excellent article on Solving the Delta Low Tides

Delta Bound - June 4th

I am Delta Bound this weekend June 4th - i can feel the electricity in the air as I am getting geared up to go out and scout out some fish for the Upcoming WRL tournament on June 18th, but I think the electricity in the air is literally from the thunderstorms that are passing through the region. 

I think this year the lesson that the fishing gods are trying to teach me is to fish in the moment - each and every cast is a new moment - cause that is the weather I have been in ALL EFFIN YEAR! So prefish for the Delta is going to be Rain Showers throughout the day and winds SSE with a barometric Press at 29 and dropping, temp is looking to be around 63 with a low in the 50's tide is 3+ high at 7:am and -.5at 14:30 lots of water coming through the system and it be cold water - Of course our tournament in two weeks will be in the 80's no breeze and same tide - well at least the tide will be the same!  

School of Bass - Guest Speaker Gary Dobyns - Thurs June 2nd

I just wanted to give a big thanks to Damon Witt for his dedication to SABF - for those of you who in the Sacramento Area that have not attended you are really missing out on some inside information on what is going on RIGHT NOW and what is coming up in the next few weeks out on our lakes. This is a great place to network, make friends and learn some really current and relevant information. Every First Thursday of the month at C&C Marine in Citrus Heights!

Big thank you to Gary Dobyns for coming out to SABF and share with us some of his thoughts on the DETAILS of bassfishing, these are the non-glamorous, seemingly mundane but BIG distinctions between just going fishing and taking your game to the next level. Gary spoke on Boat Control, Hook Design, Hook placement, presentations, tweaking baits, and getting into the nuts and bolts of how to stack the small things into a large average of your success - it was really cool seeing how he breaks down a hook design and the details that go into the decisions in his fishing and into Dobyns Rods.

C&C Marine has a great selection of Dobyns Rods that are a part of the dealer demo program call Mike at C&C for the details Lots of people ask about what rod does someone else like to fish with - this demo program is an OPPORTUNITY for you to figure out what rod works best for you and your style of fishing.

Good to see Wayne with WesternBass.com and Kent with Ultimate Bass hanging out and enjoying the fun.

See you out on the Water!

Ash