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Northern California Lake Fishing Report

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Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

  • Santa Clara County
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      Water Temp: 67 degrees

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: The topwater bite has slowed some, but , you can still get some. We need some more of those overcast mornings. The crank bite should start very soon. Once the water cool's a little bit more those fish should go on the bite.Not all the big fish are deep!
      City: San Jose

      Tips: Go to Clear Lake it's on all the 5lb'ers you want!!!

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

      Report: for B.K. -> a turkey sandwich and 2 cliff bars, happy to help!
      City: Sonora, CA

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      Water Temp: 63-65

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished from 7 to 2 today with a good friend, Danny Miller. Started in Victoria with buzzbaits and chatterbaits. Boated 2 decent 2# keepers and several small fish on the chatterbait on the outside weedlines. Danny missed a big fish it blew on the buzzbait but didn't stay buttoned. He got dozens of small fish blowups. Switched to jigs and Senkos but only caught dinks. Lots of small fish bites.

      Ran to Two Skulls where we threw the buzzbaits again. Hooked up with one big fish that came unbuttoned. Several small fish came on Senkos. Overall, slow.

      Went to North Victoria where we got into lots of fish on the chatterbaits. Caught two around 3# and several more smaller keepers. Switched to jigs and Senkos...again, only small fish.

      We ended our day fishing Disappointment in 8-12 feet of water. Several bites but no fish.

      Our best five went under 12 pounds. Never got a big bite. Wind blew very hard by the end of the day.
      City: Fair Oaks

      Tips: Virtually all our decent fish came on reactionbaits. They wouldn't commit on the buzzbaits but slammed the sub-surface chatterbait. Jigs and plastics were a disappointment.

  • Tuolumne County
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      Water Temp: ??

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: My Dad and I are headed upto Don Pedro and Mclure this weekend for some fun fishing..
      If you have been out lately and would be willing to share some advice it would be greatly appreciated. E-mails are welcome
      Thanks
      City: Gilroy

  • Mariposa County
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      Water Temp: ??

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: My Dad and I are headed upto Mclure and Don Pedro this weekend for some fun fishing..
      If you have been out lately and would be willing to share some advice it would be greatly appreciated. E-mails are welcome
      Thanks
      City: Gilroy

  • Shasta County
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      Water Temp: 67-70

      Water Clarity: Muddy (0-2 foot visibility)

      Report: It's tough fishing out there period. Some of these other reports make it sound like it's wide open, well it ain't. The fish are small except for an occasional 14-15 incher. The high pressure flat squashed the bite. It will come back but everyone I talked with on the water said it was tough.
      City: Reddin

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      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Everybody Is On The Early Topwater.then Deep For Jigging Or Chasing Shad Balls In The Narrows.Good Fish On Walls In Upper/Sac With 3/4oz. Brown Hair Jigs 45ft and a little deeper if no wind.Good Blade Bite But Fish Are Small.
      City: Redding

      Tips: fish allday and have fun.

Monday, October 9th, 2006

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

      Report: Had a great time in HOT weather Sunday with a couple of full speeders. We did well in Big Break with Senkos in various colors for LM up to 3#. Also caught stripers on jerkbaits out in the river. Mildreds and Franks were pretty slow. No topwater although not for lack of trying.
      City: Pleasanton

      Tips: Prepare to throw a lot of money at Gary Y.

  • Shasta County
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      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: visiting a friend,great lake.stayed on steep struture with brown/brown jig.best fish each day on Rainbow Spook.good Fishing To All.
      City: redding

      Tips: Steep Walls.

Sunday, October 8th, 2006

  • Solano County
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      Water Temp: 62-68

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: The stripers are showing. Launched at Bethel Island and started the morning looking for a few stripers. We were at the end of the outgoing tide so I hit the outflow of the cuts with a Storm Swimbait. Did not take long to get slammed by a 7# striper. Caught 5 from 3# to 7# in about 30 minutes. Caught them ripping the swim bait off bottom then letting it swim back to bottom. Tried a spook, but only managed one LM.

      After that I ran way North to explore some of the more hidden reaches of the Delta. Caught LM well on the outgoing flipping tube baits to wood. Ended up with about 10 LM from 1 to 3.5#. Hit some of the high current areas with a brown/purple football head jig and picked up about 15 small mouth up to 2#. What a fun day.
      City: Brentwood

      Tips: The water is fairly clear right now and the bass are relating to shade. Find shade and you will find bass.

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      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: If you have waiting for a good time to take a kid fishing, now is the time. For sheer numbers of bites, Eastman is on fire right now. Not a lot of big fish to be had, but we did have two 3lb fish. Our best 5 probably weighed 11lbs. Even though the sizes were small, my seven year old son and I caught over 60 fish. For a 7 year old to catch over 20 fish in one day, was tons of fun for him. We caught about a dozen fish up shallow early on reaction baits and then moved out to 25-35 ft. and fished vertically. We fished drop shots and also shook a 6in. 1/4oz. dart head. Caught the two 3lbers on the dart head. If you don't mind lots of small fish, this is the place to go. If it can keep my son occupied for 7 hours, it can't be half bad. Take advantage of the good bite and take a kid fishing.
      City: Clovis

      Tips: Stay shallow in the morning and throw top water and reaction baits. As the sun gets up, move out and look for structure and fish. A decent graph is a must for this type of fishing. My son loved looking for fish on the graph and then calling his shot. Better fish in the after noon were in 30+ ft. of water.

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

      Report: First time at the lake. Spent a lot of time walking around it to see what it had to offer. Picked up a 15" keeper on a Senko around 11:00 on a shaded dock across from the boat rentals. On my way back to the car noticed dozens on large trout near the dam. Grabbed my criplure and picked-up a 21" rainbow after a few casts. Nice place; I'll be back!
      City: Antioch

      Tips: Look for bass in the shade. If the bass aren't cooperating, give the trout or cats something to eat.

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

      Report: Fished sunday for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. Water had green slime on top. Threw carolina rig (shad grub) on north lake. Hook up a 1.5lb LMB. Got only one more bite, missed it.
      City: ssf

      Tips: Slow, make the most of the bites you get.

  • Merced County
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      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished the O'neill Forebay just below the San Luis Reservoir. Started out in Check 12 area and caught a 15" striper on my first cast w/ a Rattle Trap. That was is for the day for stripers. Caught 2 more black bass - 1 on a senko, 1 on a buzzbait.
      City: Atwater

      Tips: Next time I'll bring some bait. Tried lures all day but I guess it was a bait bite. Oh well, maybe next time.

Saturday, October 7th, 2006

  • Santa Barbara County
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      Water Temp: 69.7

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Same results as last week on the spoon. I took out Victor from the Castac Club as I had promised to teach him the art of spooning this August when ever it got better.We were
      out
      at
      first light and really only fished one ledge. We had Largemouth,Smallmouth,Redear,Crappie and Rainbow trout on our spoons. We started a little slow and then it got nutz we had so many doubles we lost count and we have no idea what our fish count was. I figure 60+for each of us and our weight somewhere around 21 pounds or so. Victor had the nicest smallie I've seen in a while and it was very close to or over 4 pounds. What a fight and it sure had some colors! I think I was the hot hand on the smallmouth for the day and I had our two 4 pound largemouth also. The crappie were 9-10 inch fish and if they had been bigger I would have kept some of them. My rainbow was a holdover that was 21/2 pounds or so and very pretty also. After our gourmet hot dogs in the marina I took Victor to my Ichiban number one buku Smallmouth winter spot and I dumped our
      biggest fish of the day before we saw it and got a couple of two pound smallmouth and it dried up so we went back to where we started and Whooped ass on them until I ran out of trolling motor juice at 4. That is a first for me as those Opti's are 18 months old and the lake was near glass for the first few hours ....Hmmm I wonder if my charger is chaging these gels right? I'll have to check on that one. Next week is promised to Mace and I will make him a belever of the spoon also. Victor was going to go online when he got home and buy what we were using so I guess he's a believer! We had to laugh because it seemed to us that the grebes were going to pony up the bucks for one of my spoons and
      at days end we were sure that they were using our electronics.
      City: Santa Barbara

      Tips: Use your electronics and try to hold on the steeper edge of the drop off. If you see the bait coming through in balls or strings don't worry that you cannot see the fish but try to get the fish that live on the drop off to react to your offering. We caught a lot of our fish on the initial drop when the bait was in strings and we had 2-3 fish at a time follow the spoon up from 50+ feet. I had 6 feet of line and my spoon hanging over the side of the boat and there was a 15 inch largmouth on when I picked it up from the deck. When the bait comes in contact with the edge of the drop off fishing gets stupid. Have fun and be safe.

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

      Report: Launched a bit before 7am from Ladds with Sonora Bass, Stockton Bass and another club launched before us and all but 2 of the 20+ boats went north. A big full moon was still up as our number was called and we ran north in the channel starting off in 14 Mile with some quick topwater probing with a popper and a spook in dirty water with 0-2' visibility. Had one big blowup that came unbuttoned on the blue/chrome popper with white tailed streamer about 5' off the bank and that was the last real bite to be had in this area. That was not to be the last time that we hung our heads for a second or two when a good fish came off. The spook produced nothing. We ran the banks to the east in the early morning fog as the sun tried to come up, it was a real pretty morning. We moved further down to the backside of 14 Mile with no luck.

      Our plan was to stay in 14 Mile and if we got anything going to fish it up towards Disappointment, but if it was dead after gving it a good shot we'd move south. We used std delta colors tossing beavers, roboworms, and spider grubs at them with no luck. It was dead and we had no pattern established, not a good start...

      So per the plan we moved to the south via Turner at 10am throwing 3/8oz white/chart. spinnerbaits while moving thru the 5mph with no luck.

      Off to Victoria. As we pulled up at Union point the water was crystal clear unlike 14 Mile, and we hit the area at the bottom of low tide with the sun out and a light wind frosting the top of the water in the middle of the channel. We started on the east side flipping the tules and then decided to move down about halfway to the west side and ride the incoming tide back to the east. Had no initial luck on the middle islands, we were the only boat working the north island side, everybody else on the rip rap on the north banks looked to be throwing white or lime colored cranks or spinnerbaits. Tried not to think about what they were doing and stay true to the plan we'd settled on...

      On pure luck we happened to find a pattern that produced. I threw a carolina rigged keeper 082 with a 3/8oz bullet out from the backseat just to have some bait dragging in the water while I was retying another pole. Stuck the butt of the pole behind the passenger seat and laid the pole in front of the drivers side with the rod laying on the railing so that I had it jammed up and didn't have to worry about it sliding out of the boat if I got a bite. It wasn't more than a minute later as i was retying another pole up on the back deck for flipping a hula grub that I looked up and the tip of the carolina rigged jerked violently "that's a bite..." grabbed it, reeled it down and swung. Popped a nice little 2lb'r up and into the livewell. Whew... on the board for the first time at 11:20am. At least we'll get some points.

      Cleaned the worm up and tossed the carolina rig back out, and sure enough about a minute later another 2lb'r hits it with a hard bite from the front of the weedline. Lots more bites from in front of the weedline area, mostly dinks but one fish came unbuttoned that felt huge when I swung it on him but he came unbuttoned right away. Hate missing those big feeling ones. Current from incoming tide was starting to pick up and we were moving too fast now, slow drift was the order of the day for bites. As 1:30pm hit we decided to start heading back and hit a few spots along the way. My boater laid into a 5.6 on the 3/8 white/char spinnerbait right up against the bank in perfect spinnerbait water - trees/overhang/mudline/windblown top - that caused a loud roar to be heard in the area. Suddenly we felt back in it and started fishing harder again. He flipped a beaver into a spot about 200' further up and had a nice one come off, dang!!

      That was it, 4 fish for 11.3 and 8th place and the smallest check. Winners bagged 23lbs with a 7.6 kicker for 7 fish. We really felt like we should have been in the hunt but just lost too many good fish. In hindsight we should have moved out and flipped the front of the weedlines while in Victoria and gotten out of 14 Mile an hour earlier. Hindsight is 20/20, but our plan ended up working well.

      Patterns that we didn't get to but think might have produced something:
      * buzzbaits over the front of the weedlines - saw many jumping fish about 10' off the banks
      * crank the top of the weeds
      * crank points

      Given the final results it was a tough bite for everybody, avg of 4.2 fish per boat with avg size being 2lbs. Have to think that the full moon really allowed them to feed hard duing the night so that they could be finicky during the day.

      All in all not a bad day, beats working!
      City: Sonora

      Tips: worm and flip the front of the weedlines. others reported most all fish came of hard bodied reaction baits in red and white. a few senko fish were caught.

    • By

      Water Temp: 68

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Pretty much a typical fall delta day. Around 40 fish to 3 pounds. Kinda just went on the same run I did last weekend. Started near Hog and got the 3 pounder on a Rover and had one other big blow up. Went to the Lucky Craft crank and got 4 or 5 more, but no size. Tried for salmon for 45 minutes and then up to Sycamore. The bite was definitely slower than last week, but we were looking at different conditions this week. Calm, blue bird skies with a slight north-east wind compared to last weeks breezy, overcast, south-west wind. Also had the big moon this week. The crank and jig were the the ticket. Also nailed a dozen striper or so, but all small. Beautiful day to fish on, but could have used some wind out of the west to spur the bite. Regardless, a good day on the water with a couple of buddies.
      City: Roseville

      Tips: Work topwater for the first hour. Not a ton of bites, but the quality is good. Jigs and cranks are working well. Drag the jigs on the outside weedlines and work them fast. Best method was hop the jig or rip it out of the weeds. Remember, the crawdads spawn in the fall and are very active. The bass are feeding heavily on them along with the shad.

  • Sacramento County
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      Water Temp: about 68

      Water Clarity: Clear (4+ foot visibility)

      Report: Bridge again, 16 keepers, 16+ limit. One black, rest spots. Bite was off at 8:00 a.m. Jigs prevailed again, tossed everything but the kitchen sink, nope, wanted jigs. There were a few boats on it throughout the morning, didn't see anyone catch a fish.
      City: sacram ento

      Tips: The fish are probably coming to feed there briefly then returning back down stream to rest in deeper water. It happens this way every year. Follow the fish as they travel back and forth to increase your limit. There are several sanctuaries close down stream, try those as bite slows. Cut'm off at the pass. Deeper fish will require heavier weights so, rig up before you leave. good fishing, jimbo

Friday, October 6th, 2006

  • Amador County
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      Water Temp: 70.7

      Water Clarity: Stained (2-4 foot visibility)

      Report: Fished full moon from 5:30 pm - 2:30 am. My friend caught most of the fish but I managed 3 at least. Biggest 5 went about 12. Biggest was around 3. Mostly senkos but I had a keeper on a chug bug for awhile. We tried about every bait. Very slow - about 1 fish per hour. Evening bite was better than nite bite. It was post frontal conditions but I don't think that was what affected the bite - I think it's just that the fall bite hasn't started yet. Water down over 15 feet. Caught fish on main lake points and in coves. Saw fish on humps but no takers.
      City: Folsom

      Tips: Fish were shallow during the evening and deep at night (25 feet). I guess if I could have stayed till dawn the bigger bite would have materialized. Soon trout planting will begin so the lake will be a zoo with trout fishermen.

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

      Report: i thought the crankbait would really produce but NOT!!! maybe i chose the wrong spot to fish or wrong color to fish. anyways, jigs did the trick for me again but not too many fish or size. hey, at least i didn't get skunked . nice to be out in nature? yeah, right! i hate being out there and getting skunked. i like to catch fish period!!! the bass were tight up against the weeds for me . deep water only produced crappie which i'm not complaining about.
      City: san jose

      Tips: try marios topwater approach and punching the weeds. i still believe the bigger bass are 20+ feet deep most of the day. just can't get them to bite.