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Northern California Lake Fishing Report

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Tuesday, April 24th, 2001

  • Shasta County
    • By

      Water Temp: 57-60

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: a very interesting day today, you know how you get used to tossing something that has been eective and all o a sudden nothing works but you end up sticking with a game plan that doesn't pan out............. ;lake at 18.30, air temp going in at 615 am was 56, ran over into the back o holiday harbor iguring they ought to be up shallow in thereand they were but we couldn't get anything going, Dick caught a lttle dink on a small crank bait and walt git bit on a mgm 109 4inch, I couldn't get anything going on the 127 or the 109 until........... I picked up a green ghost II # 125 4inch and bang, irst cast a 2.0 lber. we move over near ort creek and i'm pitching the 127 again and nothing is happening, tie on a #69 blue ghost 4inch and BANG another 2.4. You would think I would hav e igured this out but not me, move outside o blue canyon and Im'm back on the MGM 109, nothing is happening, walt manages one more on a aded oout 109 idget so I put on the green ghost again and promptly ppick up 5 to 2.5 and my uncle is trying to see what's tied on, it was banged up so I tore it in hal and tossed it in the lake, unortunately it didn't sink and now he wants one o these 125 green ghost II,I tell him they are 8 bucks apiece on the lake and he taps me with his spinning rod so I hand one over. he catches two quickly and then things slow down at 1045 am. we head back and the airtemp getting out is 81. guess I will have to get sosme 125's and some 69's, o course u can never have too many worms!
      City: Redding

    • By

      Water Temp: warm enough

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: It seems the topwater bite has begun! Caught in the neighborhood o ten ish rom about 10" up to about 6.5 lbs, that being my biggest bass since moving to CA. Caught a couple on wht/char spinnerbait, and a couple on Senko, and the rest, including the big one on blue and white Zara Puppy. I LOVE TOPWATER!!Should just get better and better now.
      City: rohnert park

      Tips: Wait until the sun dips below the mountains, and then start in with the topwater stu. I did see a mountain lion on the opposite bank, and this is a bank only lake, so keep your eyes open i you go there.

Monday, April 23rd, 2001

  • Plumas County
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      Water Temp: 46

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Smallmouth are moving and i the weather continues to warm,it should be good in the next couple o weeks. Also had somenice browns and salmon hit pointers,ripped or bass, thisam. Remember Honey lake bass open tournament, April 28 at irstlight at the dam. Come have un. Then Great Basin(reno,nv) on the 5th o May and Burney,ca(inter mt. bass) on the 6th. They both launch at the damand are open tournaments. Believe any and all would like tosee you come join in. You can sign up and pay at the dam. Sae light is launch time, so arrive and sign-up early.
      City: susanville

  • Santa Clara County
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      Water Temp: Warm

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fishing was hard, had a couple short hits on shak'in worms. Fished blades,fluks and brush hogs and not a tap. I caught one big female at 15ft on a swim bait that weighed 9.8 lbs. If it wasn't for that fish it would have been a skunking.
      City: San Jose

      Tips: Fish have lockjaw right now. Hopfully with some more good hot days they will get active agian. Did not see any beds yet. No more cold fronts!!!!!!!

    • By

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: did very well before the storm last week throwing blades, but got skunked on monday, tried everything blades, plastics, down sized to 4 inch plastics, nothing. Looks like the storm put them in lockjaw. Hopefully if the weather stays constant theyll start moving back up. Water level was up from last week, still havent seen any bedding bass.
      City: san jose

      Tips: throw everything and let me know what works

    • By

      Water Temp: Warm

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fishing was hard, had a couple short hits on shak'in worms. Fished blades,fluks and brush hogs and not a tap. I caught one big female at 15ft on a swim bait that weighed 9.8 lbs. If it wasn't for that fish it would have been a skunking.
      City: San Jose

      Tips: Fish have lockjaw right now. Hopfully with some more good hot days they will get active agian. Did not see any beds yet. No more cold fronts!!!!!!!

    • By

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: did very well before the storm last week throwing blades, but got skunked on monday, tried everything blades, plastics, down sized to 4 inch plastics, nothing. Looks like the storm put them in lockjaw. Hopefully if the weather stays constant theyll start moving back up. Water level was up from last week, still havent seen any bedding bass.
      City: san jose

      Tips: throw everything and let me know what works

  • Sacramento County
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      Water Temp: ? pretty cool

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: My riend Janet and I ished out o our loat tubes on thesouth side o beals point,useing 6inch smoke with purple lake worms in about 15-25t. o water, we caught a dozen nice bass,mostly spots,in 3hrs.
      City: Sacto.

    • By

      Water Temp: warmer

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: It might be optomistic to say my reports are an aquired taste, but i you are interested in improving the quality o the angling experience at this lake, read on. I saved the best takes or last. Reer to this report as "The Mother". 6 spots to 2lbs and a smallmouth various banks in the south ork between 6:30pm and dusk. Worms and small spinnerbaits- the baits my our year old throws on his Pokemon signature series spin cast outit. Stayed out o the willows. Just returned rom my third event at Oroville this year and an angler I respect highly suggested that the ishing in a resevoir behind an Auburn Dam would be a similar experience. That's more poor inishes and wasted money only much closer to home. Image the damage when Aaron Martens rolls up as a late entry and runs to Yankee Jims to drop shot. We need to build support to get this project built. My riend (I can prove this) is a multi species angler that catches a bass or two i.e. he waxes me all the time. I inally convinced him to enter the Golden State tourney here with me last May. His comment around 10:00am was "My God, I'm ishing on the reeway". At Auburn, the entire Shirtail Canyon would be a 5 mph zone. The best structure to whack Ledgebusters on would be the pontoons o all the houseboats at anchor. Excuse me- anyone reading this involved in this this year's Golden State tourney, could you get the second wave launched just a tad earlier? By the time we took o last year the sun was so high, you could have competed in a solar powered submarine. I'm normally not a supporter o giant public works projects but or this we need to get all the republican voting good ol boys to punch the correct hole and cross party lines. I know that's a stretch ater the ast start the Bush Administration in o to. Ironically, it was the Carter Administration (he was a democrat)that killed Auburn Dam. What can you say about someone who gave us the national 55mph speed limit. Truthully, getting approval or a project o this magnitude will require a little pork barrel legislation in Washington. That's where our senator says to Nevada's senator "hey, I'll vote to build a nuclear waste dump in your state i you vote or a magniicent recreation area in mine. That's air isn't it?" Actually Oroville is a state project and Auburn is a Bureau o Reclamation (Feds) project like Hoover and Shasta. Those projects were New Deal era depression busting eorts initiated by FDR (that's Franklin Delano Roosevelt- a president, or all you slackers that skipped history class to go pond ishing. You know, back in the day, when you marked on you calender the two times a year you caught a bass over 14") and times have changed. Power is one reason. Today, less than 35% o caliornia's power is hydroelectric. Good thing deregulation gave us plenty o other sources or this summer. Water is another. We need more subsidized water or armers to sell to L.A. Aterall that's way more proitable than growing this year's government price supported surplus crops we give to our enemies in Russia. The armers are entitled to a new CD player in the combine. Still, getting Auburn approved is going to be a major challenge. Making it more diicult, Folsom Dam had $230 million dollars appropriated to retroit the outlets o the dam. Currently the capacity o the outlets is 40,000 cs. The American River below Folsom Dam has lowed as much as 165,000cs when the three 100 year loods have occured in the last 15 years (do the math). Folsom does have those reliable lood gates. As a lood control solution or the entire American River drainage, just retroitting Folsom is like putting a bandaid on the ruptured Aorta o a competing marathon runner. Finally, while I'm turning this into political comentary, can we leave the spots out o Auburn? Fishermen rom the TVA lakes are claim to have invented the smallmouth bass. That's the same place where Deliverance was ilmed. Consider the hoards o little smallmouths and thier new opportunity when lake Clementine is innundated. The Black Bass Action Committee o norhtern caliornia supports an initiative to introduce Floridas into Oroville to oset the decline in northern largemouts. Decline? Shouded in controversy, the hysteria surrounding largemouth sightings at Oroville is just a ootnote in history about catch and release and altered photgraphs taken in mysterious circumstances. It was only when ishermen were undergoing compulsive behavior treatment under hypnosis that reports began to surace in local ishwraps (newspapers)with uncanny regularity claiming that anglers were abducted by alien beings like Gary Klein and made to catch largemouths on shoreline cover. Due to the code o no dock talk, conclusive evidence has remained elusive and these accounts were never conirmed. The Men in Green (The Department o Fish and Game)ultimately closed the books completely on largemouth sightings at Oroville and let many cases unresolved to this day. Because o the spots let's just say a Largemouth is pretty rare. Ask yoursel, are you really ulilled culling 30 spots to weigh in six pound limits? I spots a are introduced into lake Utopia(Auburn), the hottest IPO will be all the new inesse worm manuacturers. Someone needs to take Greenspan bass ishing- someone other than Bush. Not Skeet Reese either. I that happened, Greenspan would be at the magazine rack in a suburban D.C. Rite-Aid conused because there were no bass ishing articles in the latest GQ magazine. So I'm dreaming big. There's alot o reasons to build Auburn Dam.
      City: El Dorado Hills

      Tips: While I muddy the subject, the water is clearing here. Downsize lines and baits.

    • By

      Water Temp: 61-64

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Well, I went to Pablo planning on landing some bass. I did manage to catch one and missed a ew more. I decided to throw out a little powerbait on my other rod because the Bass ishing was so bad. I have never caught so many trout. Honestly I stopped counting at 20. I missed at least ten more. I decided to troll or a bit and bam 3 more in a hal an hour. I heard later that they had stocked the lake with 3,600 pounds o trout so that may be the reason I caught so many. I was using chartruese lake bait about three eet o the bottom. Berkely attractant was the key I think. I am going back Friday so hopeully I can get some bass. I saw people casting with all there might and they asked me why they weren't getting any. The ish are no more than 20 eet out in shallow water. Don't over cast.
      City: Alameda

      Tips: CATCH AND RELEASE. I did it on all but two o my ish. They wouldn't have survived.

  • Trinity County
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      Water Temp: 50-53

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: in at trinity center at 630 am ran due east to opposite shore and a small island, picked up two to 2.5, both smallmouth and thinking hot dawg! that was it till 10 am or two more at a pound and a hal a piece in the north end tailings and then it quit, saw two other small ish boated. ish caught on a crankbait and a 109 MGM 4inch worm which was hit real hard, the crank bait just loaded up, the biggest came on a 109 worm. lake up to 34 1/2 eet very murky water, no wind out at 1145 am, air temp going in was 39 and coming out was 60 , very pleasant.
      City: Redding

Sunday, April 22nd, 2001

    • By

      Water Temp: 62

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Went to CFW and just ished o the shore or 1 1/2 hours or so. I igured it would be nice to get o the boat or a change and get some excercise. My irst cast produced a monster 1 1/2 pound crappie on a lizard. I continued to ish the lizard and hit 6 spots to 1 1/2 pounds. As the sun went behind the hills I switched to rippin' and got 5 more to 2 pounds. Not a bad 1 1/2 hours o ishing. I am looking orward to putting the boat on the water out there and really tearing it up.
      City: roseville, ca

      Tips: Just that magical time o year when ishing can be really easy.

  • Lake County
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      Water Temp: 56-58

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: I tried to talk my clients out o a scheduled Sat night trip, because o the previous days hail and snow, but they wanted to go anyway. Now, I'm glad we did!! I think he wanted me to post this, and I am happy to do it, 'cause he inally did well!! Honestly, he has struggled to pick up proper presentations o bass ishing in past trips, but around midnight, I had to keep runnin' or the net. Couldn't believe it! He started o with a 2-10, which I was simply glad he got one in the boat. In the next 15 minutes, he stuck 3 more - 3 1/2, 3-14, and 5 lbs, all on big red/black brush hogs. And he was 4 or 4, until he lost the last one. All I could do was smile, and I think he was grinning too!!! As a teacher, I have to think he passed his inal! His brother was along to try bass ishing or the irst time, but could only manage 2 bites. I caught 8 bass up to 6-7, on Weapon jigs and brush hogs. Our ive best were 22 3/4 lbs - better than I expected or a post-ront night. We did ind some ish very shallow as we targeted tule clumps and rock walls rom Konocti to Buckingham. We did get a 4 pounder beore dark at Rattlesnake Island - all the others were ater dark.
      City: Yuba City

      Tips: The lake had warmed up 2 degrees this past week in spite o the weather, and with warm weather on the way, look or lots o bass to move shallow this week. Rock-tule combinations are hard to beat this time o year in the south end. Bass will spawn on the big, lat rocks that are surrounded by tules. Flippin' and pitchin' brush and Power hogs, lizards, Senkos, and tubes, should do the trick in the next couple weeks - IF - the weather stays stable.

  • Tuolumne County
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      Water Temp: 68 degrees

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Gradual sloping grassy banks just inside o middle bay using 4" green weenie style worms and lizards on a split shot rig got us a limit and culling by 9 am. Tried cranks & jerk baits rom 6:30 to 7:25 w/no hits. Switched to worming & boated our irst ish at 7:30. Had to drag the worm real slow & be ready to set the hook at the irst sign o the sot pressure pickup. Let or Rogers Creek at 11:30 & picked up one 2 1/2 lb. black then ished the last 1/2 hr. in Rodriguez. Hooked a 6 + but didn't get a good hook set. Tried to keep the ish down & the line tight but it made a quick run or the boat & jumped spitting the hook just beore it got into netting range. Ended up with a 5 ish limit o 12.60 lbs.
      City: Delhi

      Tips: Slow drag split shot craw colored worms. Grass & sandy coves w/the ish in 10 to 15' o water.

  • Sacramento County
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      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished the metro newbass tourny today. Had a limit on jigs and plastics by 8:30. Culled some ish on same jig and senkos later in the day.Caught about 20 ish all day inished in the middle o the ield. First place said the were sight ishing with lukes in a cove in the north ork.We stayed on the main body and it was too windy to sight ish . First place had a good limit o 27#s
      City: Galt

      Tips: Fish are bedding now i you have the patience then i would suggest site ishing or the big emales i your in a tourny i not i suggest leaving them alone and ishing the mainbody dragging plastics in 5 to 15 eet o water

    • By

      Water Temp: 62.8 degrees

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Started ishing at 7 am & caught the 1st ish at 7:15, 4 1/2 lb bass. Was the biggest or the day & caught it on a Crazy Shad twin prop. bait. Had a couple o blow-ups on it ater that & the wie missed a couple on a Rapala skitter pop in shad pattern. switched to crawdad pattern 4" worms & was culling by 8:15 am. My wie was having one o those days where nothing went right. The bites were either a light tick, tick & she'd set to late or the line would slowly move o & by the time she noticed the ish would have her wrapped around tules or stickups. I didn't want to burn up all my avorite worms so I switched to a Gambler bacon rind, its like a brush hog, in watermelon w/red lake. These would last about 2 or 3 ish beore I had to put a resh one on. Wind picked up & we let by 11 am. best 5 went about 15 lbs. Fish have moved up shallow, 2 to 7'.
      City: Delhi

      Tips: Top water until 7:30 then your avorite dark craw pattern plastic. Bite is subtle & work your worm slowly through tule/stickup pockets.

  • Shasta County
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      Water Temp: 67

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: WE to jones vally and looked or deep cuts with trees and bushes and we used jerky J shad and spinner baits an crank baits jig rubber worms eany thing works right now i you put it in there ace we cought 70 bass with two people Goog luck catch lots o ish
      City: Redding

    • By

      Water Temp: 55

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: in the water at jones valey at 605am, water at 55 and level to 18.50, no wind lat water, ran up to outside clickapudi or a quick one on a trout pattern crank bait and one on a jig, ran up to outside blue canyon or 13 more, 8 were over 2 lbs with the bigest a at 2.4. the emales are really geting close, had two with bloody tails, caught most on the 127 MGM 4inch and 4 on the MGM 109 4 inch, out o the water at 1030, big crowd hitting the lake this am , even some skiers and two jet skis, at least 60 boats in at jones valley, had two questions via email about the MGM's, they can be purchased locally at Strictly ishing on Athens Ave in Redding or ordered rom the company website at www.MGMLURES.com (530)246-3663, the union 76 at the MTN. Gate exit o o I-5 also has them.
      City: Redding

  • Sonoma County
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      Water Temp: warmish

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Sonoma is wide open right now. Go to the shallows and the ends o creek arms. Throw Senkos. Look or them. They are all over the place and catchable. Even been dropshotting or skittish shallow ish to bring the baits right to their eye level, and it works.
      City: Santa Rosa

      Tips: Winter sucks, spring's the payo.

Saturday, April 21st, 2001

  • Napa County
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      Water Temp: 60

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: I fished along the banks near Markley Cove on Saturday from 3:00-6:30pm.This was a good day on the lake after the rain storm on Friday. Many bank anglers getting fish..Got 1 dink early on with bright spinners, then the bite slowed for about an hour...kept moving and trying differents baits. Took 2 more dinks on night crawlers then went to plastics in the early evening and got bit on crawdads and a 4" pumpkinseed worm... Had a good day, no complaints. Warm weather and water coming soon!
      City: Fairfield

      Tips: I'm no bass pro,and I have fun trying every kind of bait I have ... plastics, spinners, jigs and live worms. They all work at Berryessa.