Happy new year. Its been a stretch since I've posted so I thought I might try and cram a bunch of fishing days in. My fishing has been all over the place with local Surf, California Delta and Carp on the fly. Weather has been spectacular. We have had a high pressure system, similar to what we see in summer, for most of the winter. What that means is mild sunny weather with little to no off shore breeze. It's been in the 70s daily since about Christmas. What that means to fishing is everything is catch able and you'll do it comfortably in short sleeves and shorts! Since I cannot control the weather, I will just enjoy it despite the fact we are in crisis mode here in California with the lack of rain and snow on back to back years. I pray something will break soon!
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| Elkhorn Slough |
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| Moss Landing, Ca |
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| Wife with a trophy Artichoke |
Carp on the fly is up one day and down the next depending on where you are. Last week I spent the day and caught one on a maybe a dozen shots. Today I found an area where they were funneling in with the outgoing tide and caught over a dozen up to 14-15lbs. Just have to get out there and make it happen. They are happy and I saw some fish daisy chaining in the shallows acting like they might want to start an early spawn. The fish I'm targeting are layed up sunning or cruisers. They will charge on well placed flies moving through the water column in there zone. A little flash really helps. Fat hard fighting fish ranging from small scrubs up to some really nice specimens. They are (size class)running together right now.
Striper fishing has been pretty damn solid as well. Especially the Delta but the landlocked fish are eating too. Just not much size for me. I got out with Dan Blanton on his skiff recently and we did pretty good for mid January. We followed the tide and found fish on flats and also Channel bends. It was a lot of fun and I'll be back out there tomorrow morning.
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California Delta
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Bass and Crappie are kinda slow but Ive been a getting a few every time out on Gear. Most Bass on the lakes are 25-35' with an occasional shallow fish and I suppose you could catch a few on flies but bass tackle is funner. Lots of life out on my local lake.
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| A local pair of Eagels |
5 comments:
Man I wish I was closer to the Delta. Such a great fishery.
We also are under extreme high pressure with less than half normal snow pack and an inversion with temps monotonous, 25-29 with the ski slopes in the high 40's. Good you get to take advantage of the high as it affects you.
Gregg
I have always been curious about your brakish carp. How close do they get to the salt? Do they act totally different than other carp or pretty much the same? Or do I completely mis-interpret what you mean when you are talking about tides. I have always assumed that meant you had carp that were pushing into brakish water?
Well, we have vast amounts of tidal carp. The California Delta is full of them and it's a huge tidal estuary. With in San Francisco bay, there are lots of smaller watersheds feeding the bay with similar micro estuaries. All of those creeks are tidal on the lower reaches. The carp will move close to SF Bay (saltwater) on wet years when saltwater intrusion is less. Right now, the salt and fresh meet higher into the system since the water sheds are so dry. Often fish just cannot retreat to pure freshwater due to extreme low flows. They do try though! They are not a saltwater fsh. I don't know the exact specific gravity
of the water but the aquatic plants are good indicator
of salinity. This is not unique to California and found all over the world where Carp exist. They act similar but often feed beat the the hour or so before and after a tide swing. We have two tides and pretty large swings compared to others.
Yeah, I have communicated with some guys in the North East that have tidal carp. The tidal carp there seem to be big. Really big.
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