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