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Northern California Lake Fishing Report

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Saturday, May 1st, 2010

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

      Report: I went up on May 1st to check out the lake that started the Sonoma County Belly Boat Bass Club. The last two years they had drained her down to a small pond, but fish still remained in her. It was like a breath of fresh air to crest the hill side and see she is now filled to the brim. I looks as if they even let her flow over the road and test there new spillway. I walked the banks and checked out the shallows and sure enough, there were smakk bass and bluegill swimming around. Best of all I saw fry swimming too. I saw small fish in a lot of the shallow flooded areas and this leads me to think that the pull down of the lake might have been a good thing after all.

      I'm going to put on a turkey shoot there Saturday May the 8th 2010. Check in on the dam at 6AM and fish till 2:20, with a 12" minit, $21.00 buy in with 1 dollor going to the first keeper caught and then winner take all. 1st place will get a White with blue flake CatchemCaro swim bait and big fish will get a Delta Craw CatchemCaro swim bait. I'm sure fishing will be tough and all the fish will probably be small, but it will still be a walk down memory lane as this is how it all started in 1983.
      Rich
      City: Santa Rosa, Ca

      Tips: I think flipping will be the ticket.

  • Tuolumne County
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      Water Temp: 61.5

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: Was only able to fish for about 3.5 hours. Picked up 17 and lost another 6-7. Stayed in the river past the second bridge for the first 1.5 hours and picked up 10 but nothing over 1.25lb. Headed into the main lake and the size improved but still nothing over 2lb.
      Saw larger fish on the finder but they ignored everything I threw at them.
      City: Danville

      Tips: Stay shallow in the main lake and fish the timber. Fish were between 5 and 10 feet. Eveything caught on drop shot and darter head tube. Drop shot worm color was purple punisher.

    • By

      Water Temp: ??

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Went about 6PM after nice sunny/windy day. fished nicasio Rd. side in shallow cover with spinnerbaits & did lots of jigging with nothing. Saw carp splashing around. Any suggestions as to what went wrong. Brought home 14 ticks..I know that I'm still a novice but would love some tips emailed or whatever..Thanks and I always release fish.
      Peace
      City: Petaluma

  • Shasta County
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      Water Temp: 59

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished for week out of jones valley up the pit. It took a day to figure out the bite. 4" green wennies, sencos.3rd bounce into 25ft. 3/16 weight almost all fish came on the fall. with to much weight the bait fell to fast. white spinbaits at dark. largest fish #3.5 30- 40 fish days lots of clones. Good time had by all.
      City: Lakeview Ore.

      Tips: use 3/16 weight or less. watch your line!! alittle more heat and the fish should be right on the bank

    • By

      Water Temp: 56-58

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: launched at packers bay, fished coves just off the main lake and a few islands. caught 23 fish in 9 hours mostly on senkos 3 and 5 inch in 25 to 35 feet of water. Most fish where 11 inch or smaller...got 4 smallies rest where spots. one 13 inch smallmouth and biggest spot was 15 inches! Fish bit all day but hard to get a hookset sometimes!
      City: klamath falls

      Tips: use green and set the hook quick...if they feel ya its too late..fish drop the bait!

    • By

      Water Temp: 50

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished pit river arm using 4" watermelon senko caught about 15 decent bass on them. Also caught several letting the wind drift the boat pulling a suspeneding jerk bait along the bank. the biggest came from the jerk bait.
      City: shasta lake

      Tips: flash minnow color suspending jerk bait along banks.

Friday, April 30th, 2010

  • Yuba County
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      Water Temp: 57

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: For anyone that loves the fight that a spotted bass gives then Bullards Bar is the spot. These fish are freaks of nature. This lake has numorous 3-5 pounders. I've been out there 4 times in the last month and everytime our best five was 20 plus. The cat is out of the bag. This lake is on fire. Crankbaits and jigs have been the bigger fish bait for us but plastics such as tubes and wacky rigging a 6 in worm has boated an occasional "freak of nature" too. The bass are in the backs of the coves now and if you can find them, hang on. I fish alot of different lakes and I can tell you, I have a new favorite lake. I love this place.
      City: Roseville

      Tips: Crankbaits and jigs in a craw pattern have boated my bigger fish.

  • Solano County
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      Water Temp: 59-64

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: just a little windy! caught a few on riprap banks on the turn of high tide with a chatterbait then switched to a dropshot on moss bed edges the rest of the day ,could not buy a topwater strike.. all in all I'd say it's showing signs of life out there.
      City: woodpile

      Tips: I would agree with everyone else about dead sticking your baits.Doesn't appear the want much action in your baits right now.

    • By

      Water Temp: 62ish

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: Hit some 2-3 foot waves as I crossed the main channel with nothing but whitecaps in view. I put my 80#'s of thrust to good use only catching 4 fish up to 3.5#'s. Flipped deep into tule's sweet beavers and tubes. Caught my biggest on a lipless crank craw pattern. I fished anywhere I could get out of the wind and waves 18-20mph winds made for an interesting day.
      City: Stockton

      Tips: Don't pee into the wind.

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

  • Napa County
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      Water Temp: 63-65

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: The wind and the wakeboarders really stirred up the waves today turning the clear water along the banks to stained. Got nine in the boat today (smallmouth & spots) using plastics. Started in clear water with Margarita Roboworms and end in stained water in the narrows with 4" Bluepearl/Silver flake Yamamoto. I threw a small bright colored diving crankbait in the stained water with no results...any pointers?
      City: Sacramento

      Tips: Fish the plastics slow in about 15' of water.

  • Solano County
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      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: Went East on wednesday.Mildred Area. Weather was windy/rain. found some quiet pockets around Tules. Lots of Big blowups on Topwater. Only stuck two in the 4 lb range. With this warming weather the topwater bite will go crazy. look forward to getting back out next week.
      City: Brentwood

      Tips: Work your Topwater slow. After letting it sitfor a quick second. give the bait a twitch.this was producing big blow ups.

  • Lake County
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      Water Temp: 53 - 58

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished from Sat 24th to Thru 29th and had a great trip..On Wed the 28th it rained and sleeted all day and we caught 37 bass. We would of had 25 lbs for 5 fish with the largest at 5 lbs 6oz. The next day Thurs the 29th we caught 23 bass for another 24 lbs limit. In the week we caught around 90 bass. We fished differant areas from the State park around to Rodman Slough.
      City: Winston, Or

      Tips: Only needed two baits. Black 3/8oz Jig and Black /red flake Beaver 420 trailer dragged slowly....and a black spo frog fished behind the tules and along tule pockets..

    • By

      Water Temp: 52-57

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Brrrrrrrr!! Another nice "spring" day at Clear Lake. I picked up my client who hails from Virginia and we drove to Lakeport and launched about 9:30 am among a crowd of boats trailers - all 5 of them!! We left the ramp enjoying the latest snowfall on the east mountains - from last night! As I thought it would - the north wind was up in no time and blew hard all day. We started fishing from the Lakeport ramp north to Rodman - boating 7 bass with my client losing the usual biggest bass. Broke his line which probably had a nick in it. He did boat the biggest of the day at 4 lbs even. We even had bass on back to back casts - but that was the only "fast" action!! I didn't even know if we would catch one with the horrid conditions, so client and guide left the lake with "frozen" smiles! Our 5 best were around 16 lbs.
      City: Yuba City

      Tips: My tip? Wait for 2 or 3 days of warmer weather!! We did see one shallow bass and she was shivering!! We found most of our success on walls and surprisingly - wood walls. My client was a good caster and got his fish on Senkos. I was using a brown/orange Blade Runner jig w/#180 Yamamoto grub trailer most of the time. Senkos did seem to be the top bait however. Average depth of our fish was about 6 to 8 feet. It was important to find deeper water near the walls.

    • By

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Only two fish today up to 8.5 lbs. Yesterday I managed six fish ranging from 2 to 7 lbs. All I can say is thanks Dave for turning me on to your secret. Very helpful.
      City: Antioch

      Tips: Be open to "out of the box" ideas. Sometimes they produce fat spawners.

  • Butte County
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      Water Temp: about 52-55

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Me and two friends enjoyed the fishing on Oroville Lake. During the afternoon the winds kicked up. I caught a good size trout and two bass. The bass were on the smaller size, but they were fun catching. They were all released to be enjoyed caught on another day.

      Tips: I caught them all on soft plastic bait. I tried crank and spinner baits, but no luck with those.

  • Shasta County
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      Water Temp: 50

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished the wind burned fishermens point for 4 hours busted off about 20$ in tackle and caught 2 6" BASS. All in all it was dormant as a dead doornail so i walked away so fast my shoes smoked.
      City: Shasta Lake

      Tips: call a cement truck to fill the place to the top!!!!

    • By

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: hooray for shasta Rec, they put the other float in at Bailey Cove this am, now plenty of room to tie up and you don't have to manuever around it in the parking lot. fishing gettin better also, throw senkos in the trees in coves.
      City: Anderson

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

  • Mariposa County
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      Water Temp: 63-66

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished this past Thursday (1/2 day), Friday and Saturday with a group of friends and camped at Mc Clure. On Thursday senko's (tried three or four different colors to find out which one worked the best)rather than minnows or anything else were what they wanted. We ended the day with 23 fish. Friday was the best day, we ended up with almost 70 fish. Maybe 10 were on minnows and the rest on senko's. One of the guys caught one that weighed 4.5 lbs. On Saturday it was slow due to a tournament. We ended up with only 15 fish. A couple on minnows, one on a spinnerbait and the rest on senko's. Including a 4 lber on a senko.
      City: Rough and Ready

      Tips: Fish seemed scattered, some were at the shore and some were in 30 feet of water?? Some were on points and some were in the back of coves. Keep moving until you find them.

  • Shasta County
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      Water Temp: you tell me?

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Heading down next week for five days on a house boat out of silverthorn. Will be fishing for bass/spots. Haven't seen much on here on the fishing this year normally lots of reports by now. We normally fish up the pit and do pretty well. We very rarely hook up with any large fish though. We went 2 yrs ago when it was 111 in the second week of may. Doesn't look like we'll be hot this year.

      Just curious if any of the fish have moved into the coves yet, not that I mind fishing for them in the secondaries and main points.

      Any fish on spinner baits or x-raps?
      City: Cottage Grove OR

      Tips: Thanks for any input....

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

    • By

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished my normal spot. I stayed in one place the whole day and it paid off! The bass must kept moving back and forth all the time. 10 keepers and 5 small ones all released.
      City: Richmond

      Tips: Senkos Senkos Senkos!