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Northern California Lake Fishing Report

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Thursday, December 13th, 2007

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

      Report: Striper fishing has been good at night. Have'nt hit the waters much during the day. Ken hit me up and i'll give you some areas to try.
      City: Discovery Bay

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      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: Striper fishing has been good at night. Have'nt hit the waters much during the day. Ken hit me up and i'll give you some areas to try.
      City: Discovery Bay

  • Lake County
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      Water Temp: 48ish

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: My buddy and I made a trip with the intention of splitshotting big minnows and seee what would happen. Jumbo minnows are expensive though. I figure they ran $1.50 apiece and I bought 4 dozen.......fairly pricy but it was a blast. My buddy dropped one down in 20 feet of water and caught a 2 lb fish right away. I missed several, lost 2 when I noticed that my #2 gami offset kept bending open------DOH! Switched to a 4ought offset hook, overkill I know and it looked kind of wierd, but it never got bent open! We fished 20' off deep rocks all day from redbud to henderson. We boated 18 fish to 6.5 lbs with 5 more up to 4.6 lbs. I fgure we missed as many fish as we caught. I would feel the fish bite and then run with the bait. Several times I freespooled the reel and let them run more. Swing on them and come up empty.
      City: Yuba City

      Tips: split shot jumbo minnows is working now.

    • By

      Water Temp: 49-52

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: I had a very successful night fishing trip with a fishing buddy - we DIDN'T freeze to death!! Close however!!! The bass have experienced some freezing however as they arn't "thunking" the bait much anymore. We wanted to go Tues evening with the cloud cover (warmer night) but couldn't so experienced a very cold Wed evening with clear skies. The bite was best right at dark with Blade Runner and Rodstrainer jigs in Horseshoe Bay/Henderson area. I stuck a 7 even and a 5-5 and we each dumped 5's. He did land a near 5 and a 4 1/2. We did get several 4's and near 4's. It is always interesting to me how certain weight classes of bass feed on certain days and nights. We did not hook a monster to our knowledge. They might have fed more the previous night. But a real successful night (we quit at midnight) with 24 in the boat and a nice limit of almost 25 lbs. Best fishing was half hour before dark and 7 to 10 PM.
      City: Yuba City

      Tips: Dress warmly when fishing the very cold nights - and days for that matter. You can always take it off, but you can't put it on if you don't have it!! When you are running from spot to spot, remember the term "wind chill"!!! Brush hogs were good as usual - I tried black/blue a lot. The jig bite was better as I suspected it would be in colder water. I threw Basstrix swimbaits some before dark but no takers. Fish are still moving some - areas that were good two weeks ago are slower now. Most quality bass were 15 to 20 feet, though I did try deeper water a lot. 2 and 3 pounders were shallower. Interesting, the last 3 we caught (I should say "HE caught", har), were the smallest of the night - 1 1/4 to 2 lbs. I think the quality bass feed earlier in the winter evening and then the smaller ones feel safe to try. I have experieced that on many winter night trips. Don't forget the Smelly Jelly!

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

  • Solano County
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      Water Temp: 48-52

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: well i tried to start off the day ripping.......nothing..then blades.nothing again. so i picked up a spinning rod, luckily i brought one and split shot a 6" roboworm all day. i targeted sunny banks with little current but close to the main channel. i targeted points but stayed off the bank. i found my self casting up to 6-8' of water all day. biggest fish shy over 2 lbs. no stripers. i figure i love fishing for bass so why switch. i tried a jig a little and cranking but nothing. total 10 fish nothing to brag about...
      City: san francisco

      Tips: work those points. look for water w/ no or little current. i do not doubt the c-rig would have work but i perferd that light presentation. it was calm and the water was like glass for 10am on till night.
      purple w/ chart. tip roboworm

    • By

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Hey Striperman, how are the strips doing? Haven't seen a report from you for a while.
      City: modesto

    • By

      Water Temp: 53.8 to 56.8

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Ok bass fisherman the trout are in for round one and traffic is on the light side and bass moved back up shallow. Swimbaits work for my fishing partner on 12/9/07 with and 8/10 and 5/0 bass both bass were in less than 5 feet of water. Jig fish can also be caught in depths of 8 to 15 feet also. Afternoon bite is much better than the morning.
      City: kerman ca

      Tips: slow down and target and area small rock piles drop offs and brush piles and small trees are holding bass.

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

  • Solano County
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      Water Temp: 49.5

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Cold...really COLD. Bluebird skies, windy, falling water temp....and 2 lousy bites. fished with a LC pointer around a pump station and the lure absolutely got whacked. Good fight for about 1.5 min then POW....the fight stops, no resistance on the line....FISH 1, ANGLER 0. I'm pretty certain it was a good size striper, (but prayed it was a LM) Missed my only fish of the day, and to top it all off, the fish stole my lure to add to his or her trophy case. Damn expensive trophy too!! Tossed jigs, and pointers all day, and went home empty handed. Going to stay at home for the holidays, hopefully cabin fever wont get to me. Brought home all the loose tackle in the boat, and reorganizing everything.
      City: E.C.

      Tips: Wear a big Jacket, and bring some patience....its tough out there!!

  • Ventura County
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      Water Temp: 63

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: I had not been to Casitas in 5 weeks so I started where I left off. I was surprised by the lack of bites and the inactivity on my meter. I had left biting fish in 50 to 90 feet of water and was catching 10-12 fish per trip last month. I fished hard from first light until 11:30 and had two fish for my trouble. One came on a 1/2 oz. brown jig with a watermelon red flake zoom brush hog tailer in 35 feet and the other came on a 1 oz. spoon in 55 feet. I had lunch with the wifey and went out for one more hour. I have a spot that is very shear in nature with stone and chunk rock that has produced a spoon fish for me every trip this year. I tried this spot for 15 minutes covering the 40+ range and came away with nothing. I turned the boat in tight and dropped the 1 oz. spoon down. I caught a fish before it hit bottom. Same size as the morning fish. At the time it was not clear if the fish had come out from shallower to eat or if I had just got lucky on the drop. Since I was in shallow I went to a 3/4 spoon and caught a 3 pounder 5 minutes later in 25 feet. Hmmm?? I then stayed in tight and mover the boat along quick ( for spooning anyway ) and would pitch forward and get a few rips on the bait and then up and out and repeat. I caught another fish ( same size ). Okay the fish are shallow in my mind. I turned the boat around and caught two more in 25 feet in 5 more minutes. I observed bait in the 125+ range in the morning but could not find or catch any deep fish as in previous visits....Strange that post frontal I would catch the same quality fish as from weeks prior so much shallower. My only conclusion is that the fish are indeed shallower. Were they there at first light or shallower?...unknown...But I did not see shallow fish like trips before. The water warmed and the fish came up and became more active later in the day?? Unknown.
      City: Ojai

      Tips: I would fish in the 25 foot or shallower zone on the smaller points towards the backs of the main coves with a jig or dropshot in a brown color. My spooning techniques are not for everyone but they do allow me to search the water quickly. Swimbait fish should be on tap close to the launch ramp but I did not investigate them. Good luck...keep positive...have fun. ;)

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

      Report: I have been experiencing a pretty decent rip bite all around the lake over the last few weekends. A few Sundays ago I had a 24 fish day in only 3 hours of fishing. This past Sunday my numbers were down but the quality of the fish were much, much better. My best 5 for the day came in at 16-7. Big fish for the day was a 4-14.
      City: Petaluma

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

      Report: Angler's Choice Pro-Team Central Vally circuit hosted it's first tournament on Millerton this Sunday. Ten teams braved a cold start to compete on this late fall day that saw some excellent quaility limits come to the scale. Veiw the entire results and news at www.usanglerschoice.net under the Central Valley Pro-Teams Results and News headings.
      City: Le Grand, Ca.

      Tips: Next tournament date - 1/26/2008 on Pine Flat.

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

  • Napa County
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      Water Temp: 57-59

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Fished a club event on Saturday. Conditions: post front, blue skies, no wind in the early morning, strong north wind by noon that continued the rest of the tournament day. Water was crystal clear and unusually warm for this time of year.

      I didn't have time to prefish for this event and the last time I fished Berryessa was this time last year. I read the recent post by Larry Hemphill and tied on 2 spoons...a 1-ounce and a 2-ounce in morning dawn color. I also tied on a jig, a C-rig and a rip bait.

      My partner and I ran to Wragg Canyon and looked for bait fish. At first, we didn't see any so we worked a couple points with the ripbait and jigs. No bites all the way out to 50 feet. At this point, we decided to cover a lot of water looking for the baitfish Larry talked about.

      WOW! When we found the baitfish, the balls were 30 feet thick! I started spooning while my partner used a dropshot. I immediately stuck a small spot. In the next 30 minutes, we finished a small limit anchored by one largemouth around 2.4#. It was half the fish came on the spoon and half on the dropshot. But, I also stuck several nice salmon. Around 10:00, we realized we were still catching a lot of fish but we weren't improving the size. We decided to try fishing UNDER the bait balls using a C-rig. The theory was that the small spots were "chasing" shad while the bigger fish were just laying below, eating the injured minnows that drifted down. This worked. We culled out all four spots with smallies and largemouth. Also caught a 2# crappie! At the end of the day we stopped counting at 33 keepers...including 7 salmon and a big crappie. Our weigh-in limit was ALL largemouth and we won the tournament by a pound and a half.

      The post-front bite was tough for the other 18 boats. We did not expect to get a check with a bunch of 2# fish but 2nd place was only 9 pounds so we were lucky.

      Thank you Larry for making honest and accurate fishing reports. We found exactly the conditions you described and our bite was fantastic. We caught fish all day including spots, smallies, LM crappie and salmon. In addition, we missed another 10-15 bites that just didn't hook up. This rare kind of fishing day is what makes all the time we devote to fishing worth it.
      City: Fair Oaks

      Tips: All fish came between 50-55 feet in big balls of baitfish. Small spoons catch small fish. My best fish came on the 2-ounce DUH spoon. The other thing was that the better fish are NOT chasing shad. They are waiting under the baitfish pods for the injured minnows to drift down...makes sense...big fish can't afford the energy to chase small meals, but they can get fat by letting the salmon and spots beat up on the balls of bait fish while they lay on the bottom sucking up "french fries". So, if you want largemouth, get under the bait balls.

    • By

      Water Temp: 53.5

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished from 10-3 caught 25-30 fish only 4 over 2 pounds all on drop shot and dart head 4 1/2" curly tail prizm shad and blue gill. No reaction bite. lots of fun.
      City: Lincoln

      Tips: fish rock banks and bounce it all the way back to the boat.

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

      Report: Still sucks unless you are fishing live shad...shad are everywhere...Did manage a few bites in the morning but nothing special...
      City: Oak View

  • Sacramento County
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      Water Temp: 54

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: I fished main lake areas using jigs managed around 15 for the day with the largest a largeie 3.4 on a swimbait. A couple of my friends where fishing just to the left of me and picked up a 7.3 largie on a swimbait. They were primarily using drop shot and jigs and I am sure they had close to 20 or better for the day.
      City: Lincoln

    • By

      Water Temp: cold

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: started fising about 11 am. tryed drop shot and darthead picked up a 2 lbs smallmouth. about 15 ft off the bank then we got a couple of nice spotties. 2 to 3 lbs. all on purple and brown sculpin. most fish got it on the drop or we would just drag the bottom and they would pick it up . we ended up with 12 fish for the day.
      City: carmichael ca.

      Tips: fish slow

Friday, December 7th, 2007

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

      Report: Is the floating ramp still used at Trinity Center when the ramp is out of the water?
      City: Lompoc, Ca

Thursday, December 6th, 2007

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

      Report: Rain...but boy what a day!!!! went out of bridge bay headed up the Mac just past Hirz.....bammmm 1st fish 3.48 bammm...2.36...bammmmm...1.89...bammm...3.13
      then lots of small 1.4 to 1.63...moved up the right side bammmm 2.54.......bammmm 3.82....bammmm 3.63 this is one of the best days I've ever had...all on a new jig I never fished before got it from a guy who is making them local he calls it the BassTard.......Butcher out..
      City: Reddin

      Tips: Mac's got fish...

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

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

      Report: Hit the narrows at 11:00 A.M. drop shotted w/ M&M 4inch and jigged W/1/4 oz brn jig hooked 10 spots in 45 min. called it a day
      City: W.Sac

      Tips: Find the bait fish and set the hok

    • By

      Water Temp: 57.8

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: I was not expecting much today. I got on the water at 8 am and fog did not clear until 1 pm! I was primarily at the lake to mark exposed areas as the lake is down a rare ~23 ft. I was hoping to find some spoon fish from 10 am to 2 pm

      Tips: Read Larry Hemphill's posts. His below posts helped me get into these fish. Thanks Larry!