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Northern California Lake Fishing Report

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Monday, November 2nd, 2020

  • Solano County
    • By

      Water Temp: Morning 58% Afternoon 60%

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Found fish starting to pull off the banks and into deeper water-six to eight feet deep. Jerk baits still working well for lots of small fish. Bigger fish comming on 6in. Sinkos-not great fishing but slow and steady-average 6 hour day has been producing 25 fish. 15 dinks-5 just keepers-5 fish between 2 and 3 lbs. Seeing lots of big fish cruising but they have not been takers for me. P.S. Docks have been productive-Punch bite OK-no top water action for me-good luck.

      Tips: Water clarity is close to 10 feet so make long cast and pay attention to boat position. The river is full of bait both shad and split tail so I'm going to start trying to match the hatch a little more.

Wednesday, October 28th, 2020

  • Amador County
    • By

      Report: by StanL » Wed Oct 28, 2020 4:00 am
      Today my friend Jon and I decided to visit Lake Pardee before it closes on November 1.
      We got on the water a little bit late, about 9:00am.
      We talked to the boat inspection gal and she told us the bite had been pretty good until this week. Turns out that East Bay Mud had dropped the lake about 4ft... that’s never good for fishing in October! Ya know, we should have been here last week lol!
      When we put the boat in the water we noticed  the surface temperature was 69 degrees. We decided to start fishing some Island tops in 15-25 ‘ on the main lake. After we hit a few of them with no luck, we made our way to the river.
      The water was super clear there so I downsized to 6# Gamma fluoro with a Ned rig and finally got a bite on a point. Jon put on a Frenzy nail with his "Secret Worm"... a watermelon purple flake finesse worm. He caught the next 5 fish all on points. We got 6 fish all together. It was a mixed bag of smallmouth and largemouth, nothing big but still better than doing yard work.
      Hope this helps.
      Stan L

Saturday, October 24th, 2020

  • Lake County
    • By

      Water Temp: 69.2

      Report: Went out Fri night & the pattern was pretty much the same as my last report except the size of the fish was much better. I actually got into a little bit of a crankbait bite, one being a 4 lb 9 oz’er that was full of juice! It’s still primarily a jig bite for me & like before, red flake is your friend! They were a little deeper in the 12-15 ft range & were scattered. I actually caught fish in places I usually don’t have any luck at, so throw to unlikely spots, you don’t have anything to lose! My biggest was 6 lb 15 oz & my best 5 went 28lbs 4 oz. I caught a lot of 4+ lber’s & boated 24. They’re really strong right now & catching them is a ton of fun!

      Tips: When I first got on the water, I hit one of my “indicator” spots & blanked. I thought “uh oh, the bites gonna fall on it’s face tonight.” Went to another spot & tore them up. They want that presentation slow & a lot of the bites they were picking up the jig & swimming with it. Jig color didn’t seem to matter as I used a lot of different colors on account of the fact that I lost a ton of them, but the trailer was best with red flake in them. I think that the fall bite is starting to heat up as all the trips were great except for the one that I took Manny with me. (It must be him lol!) This was a very interesting trip, caught a lot of fish, broke a brand new pole on a hook set & would have liked to have seen what had a hold of my jig, average size was really good even though I didn’t catch any huge ones, & I got to have an otter ride shotgun with me! What could be better than that? Have fun & stay safe!

Thursday, October 22nd, 2020

  • Butte County
    • By

      Report: by Joe daddy » Thu Oct 22, 2020 3:55 am

      Went out yesterday with Cotton and Big John. They crushed it. Catching fish all around me. The drop shot rig definitely produced more bites for Cotton. A number of fish on the reel in on that rig also. We did dabble into the cranking some, heard it’s been hot. Not much luck with that but we are no crankster gangsters by any means. Gave it up pretty quick. I finally managed to find a nice one around 3:00. Missed what felt like a large mouth bite around 10:30 on best point we came across...good day of fishing, happy to get back on the water.

Wednesday, October 21st, 2020

  • Yuba County
    • By

      Report: by Larry Hemphill » Wed Oct 21, 2020 11:32 pm

      The fall will be a good time for you to check out the structure all over the lake. You might take some photos because a lot of the lake looks the same - very FISHY!! Keep your eye on your meter because there are lots of shallow flats in places you might not expect them. Most of the quality spotted bass suspend in the fall and are vey hard to catch. I would look for points that are long and move slowly out to deep water. If they have a ledge or dropoff at the end or side of them - Bingo!!! You usually can only find the trophy spots in shallow water during the spring spawn. There should be a lot of shadows with the sun dropping lower each day. I would key on those areas. if you are there on the right day, topwater can be fun in October!!!

  • Solano County
    • By

      Water Temp: 67-68%

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished the central Delta. Slow but steady. Short bite windows that are productive between lots of looking. Punching and dock fishing drop shots and wacky sinkos has been my go to. You must wade through small fish but a good supply of 2 to 3 lb. fish will follow.-no toads but I have missed a couple of punch bites that may have tured my day around. No top water bite for me-stayed out till dark and tried to force the top water bite-no go.

      Tips: The fishing has been productive but not on fire-Best period has been incomming high tide-slows for me when tide starts moving out. Bite windows are short so keep grinding and good things will happen

  • Lake County
    • By

      Water Temp: 71.2

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: This is a tale of three night trips! I went Sat, Sun, & Tues evenings & they were quite different. Sat was pretty brisk as I got into a good jig & blade bite. Started at 11 pm & they bit pretty constantly til 5 am. Both techniques were fished very slowly & the payoff was 23 fish by myself, 5 lb 5 oz was the biggie & my limit was 24 lbs 6 oz. So, I decided to call Manny & tell him fishing’s good come up for Sun night. Well, Manny shows up, we hit the water at 11 pm again & the fishing went flat on us. They wouldn’t touch the jig when they were all over it the night before. We boated 13, 10 on jigs, 3 on the brushhog. They wouldn’t touch anything else we threw. Manny probably thinks I’m a story teller! Big was 3 lb 11 oz & the limit was a little over 17 lbs. Decided to take Monday off & watch football but went out Tues evening at 9 pm thinking that if it’s marginal again I’ll be in early. Anyway, the bite was hot! Same baits for the most part, jigs & blades with a fair share of Texas rig bites. They were in about 10-12 ft over rocky structure & were pretty schooled up. I didn’t have to move very much which is great when you’re by yourself. Big was 4 lb 12 oz with limit being a little north of 20lbs. Boated close to 40 fish but many were under 2 lbs but the action was great! I may go out again tonight & if it’s good I’ll post a follow up.

      Tips: It seems the color pattern is browns with red flake or watermelon red flake. I was really surprised how narrow they were with what they’d hit but they clobbered the right baits. They were hitting my blades so hard they destroyed 3 of them by knocking the blades off, yet they wouldn’t touch a crankbait, swimbait, or chatterbait! They were hitting the jig with equal gusto but I had a lot of drops too. Tried the Senko as well but got one puny strike which I managed to flub up! I fished south in Konocti & found that if you got bit in one place stay as there were multiple hits in each spot I tried. The trick for me was to fish a spot in progression. Start with a jig, follow with a blade & finally toss a Texas rigged Doublewide or brushhog. I usually got multiple hits with each bait! I haven’t run into any bigs but the way they were biting on Sat & Tues was well worth the price of admission! Stay safe & have fun out there!

    • By

      Report: by WB Staff » Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:43 am
      StanL sent this one in from Hogan

      Hogan Fishing Report 10/19/20 -
      FYI The Lake Hogan day use fees have resumed.
      Today I got out on the water with my son and his father-in-law Mike. We hit the water about 7am and the surface temperature was 68°.

      We started throwing underspins and topwater baits with no luck. After a couple of hours my son picked up a dropshot rig with a 6” Roboworm. He tossed it up on a point and caught one right away. We thought we were on to something. lol NOT.

      So, after a while I picked up a Bass Union 1/2oz jig with a Strike King Rage Bug trailer and ended up catching 3 fish. My son caught one more on the dropshot and we fished until about 2:00 pm.

      So after 7 hours, we caught 5 fish for the day. I would say that is still pretty tough fishing! I recently got a new Garmin Livescope and ould see a lot of the fish are suspended and chasing bait. With cooler temperatures on the horizon the bite should be picking up soon.

      Hope this helps,
      Good luck fishing.
      Stan L

Saturday, October 17th, 2020

  • Lake County
    • By

      Report: by coyote268 » Sat Oct 17, 2020 10:55 am

      Daughter and I fished last weekend. Normally we fish jigs but the hot bite for numbers was a drop shot although our biggest came on jigs (Marks Puff Ball). Up north fifth street is a good launch, Konocti is iffy and be careful of not going off the ramp at county park. Don't know about the south end but skip Lucerne. Oaks and Redbud should be OK. State park had to go out on the trolling motor. Trick is to kep moving until you find them. Crappie bit seems good. You might want to pull up the Record Bee site and read Terry Knights article.

Friday, October 9th, 2020

  • Solano County
    • By

      Report: by Fryle » Fri Oct 09, 2020 1:10 pm

      I was out yesterday as well 7-12pm and caught them on walking baits and senkos. Tried chatter, spinner, flipping the grass on low tide, and frogging but nothing on that. Walking bait seemed to be the only thing working, the smaller baits as well as 3lb on the larger strike king mega dawg.

    • By

      Report: by Dan Dunsford » Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:16 am

      We fished the Delta yesterday (10/8). The reaction baits didn't work for us except for a couple small ones. We did our best on 6" senkos. However it was still a tough bite. Water temp was 71 degrees, still warm for a fall bite. Just my two cents.

Friday, October 2nd, 2020

  • Lake County
    • By

      Water Temp: 72.8

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Just a quick follow up, fished the last few evenings with pretty much the same results as Mr Brabec. The only difference is we fish at night! We caught them on blades slow rolled over structure & almost no action on plastics or jigs. I did get a few pick ups on the jig, but they dropped it before I could set up on them. It was almost as if the fish we’re thinking, “wait, we aren’t supposed be biting jigs right now!” We caught 7 the night before & 5 last night. The largest went 5lb 2 oz and the rest were 2-4 lbs. I threw 7” swimbaits & large deep cranks until my arm almost fell off but had no takers. There’s green surface algae & the smoke is terrible, so plan accordingly. Sorry to say, that’s it folks!

      Tips: We were south, north might be better. We moved around a lot as we would get fish in some areas & blank on others. We fished wearing kn95 masks to help mitigate the smoke. They were available at Kelseyville Lumber a few days ago. Stay safe, have fun, & good luck out there!

    • By

      Water Temp: 70

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished Midlake on Tuesday. Then Fished Lakeport Thursday.Smoke was bad both days and only stayed on the water till 11 am.Algae is blooming midlake but water is clear under it. Lakeport has clear spots but for the most part alot of suspended algae and some spots are stagnant and stink.Caught 8 fish to 4 pounds on Tuesday. All reaction. Wouldnt touch my jig.Thursday fished with a friend and we blanked on the first 2 spots.Found fish in 1 foot of water and caught around 15 fish to 4 pounds in about an hour. All reaction bites. Smoke got so bad you couldnt see across lake and could feel it in my throat. Hope the rain comes next week as predicted.

Tuesday, September 29th, 2020

  • Lake County
    • By

      Water Temp: 70.4

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: We’ve been out for the last few evenings & the fishing has been pretty marginal. Sunday night we managed to boat 14 fish with our best 5 going a little over 20 lbs. They seemed to be fairly deep in the 12-15 ft range & were caught on the jig, crankbait, & Texas rig. The colors seemed to revert back to red & browns. When they hit, they’re decisive about it & they’re fighting really hard right now, but they were scattered about & didn’t seem schooled up. The wind was pretty bad (some areas were like fishing in a washing machine) & really limited our spot choice as the wind came from the SE & blew us off some of our choice spots. We also encountered smoke & heat blasts from the Glass fire that was very concerning. Thoughts to those that live up there. Monday night was dead calm & what bite we had the night before caught the same train the wind took as strikes were hard to come by! To make a short story shorter, we caught 5, the largest was 4 lbs & our limit was just under 15 lbs.We’re gonna try it again tonite, hope It improves & I’ll post a follow up report.

      Tips: Well, what little success we had were with shad pattern deep cranks rolled slowly over rocky structure. The jig bites were the same Rocky structure, we also caught a few on Texas rigged Double Wide Beavers with red flake in them. I probably should have moved more last night, but I just kept thinking the bite would turn on at any time. I got paid for my stubbornness with a 5 fish night but it could have been worse & we got skunked! Lol. Anyway I’d move around, fish slowly & try to run into them. Have fun & be safe out there!

Saturday, September 26th, 2020

  • Solano County
    • By

      Report: Here's a Delta report... after a couple tough weeks on the Motherlode lakes, my son and I decided to take a trip down to the Delta.
      We put in at Paradise point on Friday and noticed the surface temperature was 71° and the water was slightly stained. I started throwing a topwater bait with no luck, but my son, Brian immediately started catching a lot of small fish. He was throwing a Yamamoto Senko on a Frenzy Baits Wack-a-Sack.
      We made our way to the middle Delta and we figured out the bigger fish came on current points with water pushing on them, when I say bigger I mean 2lb + fish, so we decided to fish the River Rat tournament out of B&W on  Saturday.
      On Saturday, we stayed in the middle Delta concentrating on any kind of points that had current pushing on them... weed  points ,tule points, rock points ,etc. We caught fish on all of them. It just had to have moving water on them.
      On Saturday we cought 9 keepers on 5” green pumpkin Senkos with the wack-a-sack and 3 fish pitching a 1/2 oz Bass Union heavy cover flipping Jig with a craw trailer. For both techniques we used Gamma braid with a Gamma fluorocarbon leader.
      We finished in 4th place and I had a great time fishing with my son.
      I hope this helps.
      Good luck fishing.
      Stan L

Tuesday, September 15th, 2020

    • By

      Report: by Whoopbass » Tue Sep 15, 2020 12:17 pm

      Myself and a buddy fished Hogan 3-4 weeks ago. We rarely fish the lake so we targeted Stripers right at sunrise. My buddy being hard headed wouldn't listen to me where to fish, he wanted to fish up the lake in a some cove he had action in last year. The guy is always fishing old patterns no matter if it was spring when he caught em and now its winter. To me it was obvious where to fish being that all the boats stayed out in the main lake and didn't follow us up river.
      No stripers in our first two spots but I did hang a nice largemouth on a crankbait that came off. I talked him into going back into the main lake and the stripers were boiling. There were some nice ones in the mix. It was a solid hour or more since the sun came up and those stripers didn't want anything to do with any lure we threw at them. Out of all the boats around us I only witnessed one guy catch a 10" striper.
      I presume that if we were on them at sunup we may have caught a few but those stripers were focused on tiny baitfish.
      I would like to know what bait the locals use in that type of conditions or do they just go home. The smallest bait we had in the boat were 4" flukes and some small skinny fluke that Berkley makes.
      We ended up going bass fishing for a few hours and caught around 8 bass with nothing bigger then 1.5 lbs.
      He kept whining so we went to Salt Springs and it was fairly tough. Only about a dozen fish to 3lbs.

Friday, September 11th, 2020

    • By

      Report: Fishing Hogan Sept 11

      So, both my kids are in their 30’s and can remember what happened 19 years ago on 9/11.

      We decided the best way for us to reflect on the day is to spend some family time together. I decided to take them fishing and wanted to do a little something different so we headed to Hogan.

      When we got there I was surprised how many trucks were in the parking lot which usually means one thing, the stripers are boiling!

      And they were!

      Even so, we decided to concentrate on catching largemouth and smallmouth. We started fishing about 7:30 am. The lake was at 46% of capacity. The surface temperature was in the mid 70’s and the water had about 6’ to 10' visibility. There was a good breeze. The smoke in the air made low light conditions.

      We started throwing moving baits. It didn't take long before we had some action on topwater baits. By the end of the day my daughter and I caught 8 on Berkley Choppos. My son stuck with a Ned rig in the 15’ to 20' range. He mostly caught smallmouth. The fish seemed to be in the last deep water in the back of coves.

      One other thing I always thought was cool about Hogan is that they offer free use of life jacket program. If you need one, check it out.

      Hope this helps. Good Luck Fishing
      StanL

Thursday, September 10th, 2020

  • Solano County
    • By

      Water Temp: *74

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: The Delta has been fair but steady if you'te willing to work. Been fishing the central Delta-worms and punch bite is fair to good on the high out going tide-first 2 hours after ebb high has been my best action-T/rig worms and punching beavers has been the ticket. Top water has been tough with mostly small fish responding. No takers on Chatterbaits or other reaction baits. If you need action take out the spinning rod and tie on a white fluke for lots of dinks.

      Tips: Keep your baits in the shade and be persistent. 6in. kut tail worms in standard colors should do the trick.

Monday, September 7th, 2020

  • Amador County
    • By

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Postby StanL » Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:46 am

      Fishing Lake Camanche This Week Sept 6

      My friend Bud and I hit the water about 6:30 in the morning. We started by running through a lot of moving baits over island tops and main lake points. We had no luck. Then we decided to head up river. We saw a lot of bait and a lot of fish suspended on vertical banks.

      After trying several different techniques, the baits that worked the best for me was a Cool Baits underspin with a Keitech. Bud used a Bass Unon 3/4 oz jig with a Yamamoto Twin Tail on vertical walls.

      All of our bites were just a slight tick. That’s why it was crucial to use braid with a fluoroleader. I used Gamma for both. The fish where at about 15’ over 30’ of water. The surface temp was at 80 degrees and had about 6’ of water visabilaty.

      The daily reservoir water storage is 238 CFS coming in and 291 CFS going out. When there is more water going out then coming in, the fishing is always going to be challenging. We cought 7 fish for the day and Bud big fished me again!

      Hope this helps. Good luck fishing.
      Stan L

Saturday, August 22nd, 2020

  • Amador County
    • By

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: postby StanL » Sat Aug 22, 2020 8:25 pm

      Me and my buddy Jon finally had a chance to get out and do some fun fishing, so we went out to Camanche to see what was going on.

      As you all know, the heat has been terrible so we decided to hit the water early and fish until about 11:00. You will see from the pictures the sky was smoke filled and the sun was a red dot through the smoke if you looked at the one with the motor. It made everything feel overcast.

      With the clarity at about 6’ and the surface temperature at 83 degrees, we decided to start on some rock piles in about 10’ of water. After about 30 minutes with we hadn't gotten a bite. So we started running main lake points with a Berkeley Cane Walker top water bait and a Frenzy Nail with a Zoom green pumpkin Trick Worm for a bottom bait. We used Straight Gamma Gamma torque braid on the topwater becase we were making long casts and braid is better for that. We used Braid with Gamma fluorocarbon leader on the Nail. When I fish a Nail I like a leader so I can feel the bites better and also when I use a leader I can change line size more quickly if the bite gets more finicky.

      It didn’t take long before we started catching fish. We would catch 1 or 2 fish per spot. It seemed like the key was to stay on the move.

      I hope this helps. Good luck fishing,

      Stan Lafever