Monterey Bay Surf

With other fishing prospects looking so so and wanting to stay close to home I hit the beach..I contemplated steelhead in the San Lorenzo River and even brought gear but the beach looked great. LOTS more tourist folks to deal scattered all over the beach.. I hate to be rude but they walk up behind you and ask the same damn questions over and over..I need some more remote spots to go look at. Surf was flat depending on where you were and the fishing wasn't too bad. 4 hours gave up 6 perch, two Jack Smelt and one fish that came off I didn't see.

The size today was impressive and they pull like hell for there size, I will give them that. Weather was wonderful at the beach. A family from Norway was stripped down and IN the water..They were in Heaven and it was kind of funny to watch em. Light winds and warm sun helped to deal with the cold water. I cast a fly rod for the first hour and landed one barred surf perch. I havn't got that sorted out 100%. I don't like the feel of dragging 60 dollar fly lines accross the sand. I switched over to a 7'6" light spinning rod w/ 10lb braid and flouro leader, pink 2 inch grub and started getting bit. I like the braid w/ flouro top shot set up..great feel and positive hooksets. I'll get the fly rod thing figured out as I learn how to fish for these guys.

The Perch stalker was there again today. It's this local guy that has shown up EVERYTIME i'm fishing this one area. He's a Sushi Chef at a local place.. Today he followed me to a beach about a mile away?? WTF. Seems like a nice enough guy but I hope I can shake him. Everytime I release a fish he reminds me how good they are to eat. He stands directly behind me and I always feel like I'm going to get him with a back cast. Kinda wierd.

Christmas Eve on the river

Spent the day on the river. A great December day. Warm, calm and decent tides. Fished main river for stripers with flies and some backwater areas with soft current for Largemouth. Nothing was red hot but I was able to pick up a few stripers here and there up to 6-7lbs and two largemouth. One nice one pushing 4lbs. Also missed a nice bite on a jig that I'm pretty sure was another nice LM. Nice day out there with little to no boat traffic. Love this time of year!

O' Neill Forebay...

Is better known for the Stripers but I focused on Largemouth today.. It was good. Really good. I had a nice three + lb average going and basicly had the place to myself. No skiers, jet skies or even other boats out fishing. They were eating Senkos and jigs in 10-13' off of rip rap. Weather was awesome! Warm sunny December day with light winds. I fly fished for Stripers for about three hours total. I didn't get bit at all. Conditions were good but I just couldn't locate any concentrations of bait. Largemouth were hugging tight to the rock walls. Ended up with 16 Largmouth & 0 Stripers. Better fish came fishing 7in Senkos sloooow..

Our San Francisco Bay..

and California Delta estuary is seriously hanging on by a thread. The Salmon populations are also just barely clinging to life and I wonder how we let this get to where we are today. It wasn't that many years ago I experienced Thousands of Salmon come through the our Califonria Delta. Huge fish. It was amazing. It's so sad...

Santa Cruz Surf..

After a 60 something hour work week, that also included Saturday, I slept in till 7!! I took a quick look at some local freshwater that was on the verge of being blown out. I decided to head toward the beach and see if I could catch some perch in the surf. I seem to do well with Surf Perch Dec-Feb and especially during fronts if there's some rain. I was suprised and happy too see very few people and calf high breakers where I wanted to fish. There was a good rip but the swell/rollers were canceled out by a large point about a half mile away. It was easy fishing with many perch with in 15 feet of where I was standing. Anybody could catch em!

I threw 3 inch grubs on a light spinning rod. Both motor oil and a little red shad grub worked but the red shad with anchovie smelly jelly out fished everything else I tried. All Barred Surf Perch except for one Walleye Perch. I have a caught HUGE Pile Perch and a couple of years ago a pig Red Tail on this beach so you never know. On almost my last cast I stuck a nice one that came off in the surf. I wanted that one! It was a nice 12-13in perch.

I kept saying to myself that if it started to rain I was outta there but it just drizzled off and on and never really rained. It was pleasant but the water was coooold. All of that for tough photo taking!

Delta today

Launched about 7am in cold foggy conditions... Beat some good water to a froth for Stripers but just couldn't put anything together. One here one there type fishing on slow deep flies. My plan For today was to start targeting the Crappie as I do every year at this time, and two of us picked and scratched a few but we could not find any concentrations of them. The good news is the ones we did get were nice fish including two brutes in the 16-17in range. Small Chart/White clousers out produced a small jig three to one and accounted for all the bigger fish. We ended the day with about a dozen slabs released and 5 or 6 schoolie Stripers.Pretty slow over all but still a good time.

Tench!

I can add this one to the list... Not that common in North America but there is a few places with them established. They have a huge following with the Euro anglers. Most Tench in the states seem to be in private waters for some reason. I was suprised how scrappy they are for there size. Fine scales similar to trout and an interesting slime coat that is said to heal wounds of other fish and humans. It's an intersting fish. They feed primarily on plankton as fry and move onto the incect world very simalar to trout. they can be had with a fly rod or bait. I caught half a dozen with the biggest pictured below. The first 4 were little guys about 12"..The biggest one was 17+ inches, thick and close to 3lbs. In Europe they exceed 8lbs pretty regularly in both lakes and rivers. The lake is teaming with Tench and quality carp in the 10-18lb range. I also caught a few Crucian "ghost carp" today. They are deap bodied fish about 4lbs and fight like hell. They have a sort of washed out color pattern, hence the name ghost carp. The three big fish I landed were a hand full on 8lb test. I had a net today and that made things way more effecient. The weather was great at about 70 degrees..I kinda wish I had brought some flies to fish the surf perch as the Ocean was flat calm with knee high breakers at Pleasure point this morning. Perfect conditions!

Carp fishing..

Recently I was invited to fish a small lake near the coast. Turned out to be a sweet place Loaded with Carp, Tench, Sac Perch and Northern Strain LM. It really is a killer place... This is one of those places you have to hold close and i'm gratefull someone was kind enough to share it with me. That and he's a hell of a nice guy. It's situated very close to the beach so I stopped and took in the sunset tonight over the Pacific In Santa Cruz. It was stunning. The photo of the light house is exactly how it looked. Sight fishing for the carp on the fly is possible and I will be going back often. Today we fished hair rigs with a special rock salt maze and that definitly did the trick. It was fun and it's not a gimme with light spinning gear thats for sure. Unfortunalty no Tench. No sign of them. Will head back tommorow to try and get one.

Delta

Got a late start and didn't launch until almost 10:30.. Fishing was off today. Tides were good, temp was good and we had a small front coming in so it should have been great. Hit many locations and most had one maybe two fish. They were really spread out. Not to many dinks today though. Most were nice hard fighting 24-25" fish. The sky was full of weather but it never really hit me. I was ready for it...The drive home went through several micro climates; from warm and humid to wind, rain and hail on the passes and back to pouring rain when I made back to the house. Now it's clear and cool out. That means manana will likely blow like SOB. We'll see.

Carp on the fly...

I'm obsessed with these fish. They are sooo frustrating and so simple at the same time. I fished Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I blanked. Had two half hearted grabs but just couldn't get a good presentation on them with an 8wt and blew most of the shots. Fish were everywhere with a nice warm fall day in the high 60s. The 8 was just too clunky for close in fish and most of them made me. I went back this morning detirmined not to skunk. I changed up to a 5wt with a clear/camo intermediate and stayed as low and stealthy as I could. All the fish I caught were in less than 12" of water so stealth was key. The changes helped, today I had 7 solid takes and stuck 6 of those. I did spook a few but over all there were way less fish in the shallows today vs yesterday with temps in the low 40s last night. They came in singles or schools of less than 5 fish. They were slow to get going and I wasn't sure they were going to get up in skinny water at all, after only seeing half a dozen fish the first three hours. They started moving in about noon and it was steady all afternoon but they seemed to locate closer to the main lake than on saturday. The sun was in and out and that didn't help but all in all a fun time and they really scream on a 5wt! There isn't any human cover so I camped at one of the only stick ups and used that as a blind and it worked out well. Weather was cool and Fall is here!

Today

I fished different water on the Delta. Clarity is unreal with 4-6ft vis almost everywhere I went. I was actually looking for dirty water which I don't do that often for stripers. Small fish at the first two stops I made. Popped a good largemouth and went that direction with flies and plastics the remainder of the day. All in all a good day. Great fall weather with the high of 70-72. No wind to speak of and light boat traffic. Just kinda slow out there.