Change of CA Delta scenery

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Tom

Tom

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2005
Posts
51,915
Doggies were unhappy to find out I'd sneaked out fishing while they were sleeping. I had a canine welcoming committee when I got back to the dock.

A change of scenery today - the Orwood railroad bridge, one of numerous Delta drawbridges that has opened for us to pass through in the big boat many times over the years. If you wish to get in or out of Discovery Bay by water, you have to pass through this Bascule bridge over Old River.

The active railroad track parallels this slough and, if you arrive at the wrong time, the bridge tender has no choice but to make you wait for any trains that are lined up. Bridge tenders are hailed on VHF channel 9, or a long-short horn blast. I prefer the courtesy of a radio call with "please", and a "thank you for the opening" after we've passed through.
 

Attachments

  • Orwood_RR_Bridge.jpg
    Orwood_RR_Bridge.jpg
    42.6 KB · Views: 69
  • Orwood_Bridge.jpg
    Orwood_Bridge.jpg
    41.5 KB · Views: 58
  • RR_slough.jpg
    RR_slough.jpg
    28.7 KB · Views: 59
I was looking at this post and wondered what type of fish do you catch in that region? You are well prepared with all those rods.
 
The Delta has black and largemouth bass, stripers (aka striped bass), and sturgeon, although sturgeon don't show up much in the sloughs. None of  it my preferred fishing, but there's no flyfishing streams for trout around here.
You are well prepared with all those rods.
Click to expand...
Mainly to make it quick and easy to switch baits and lures.
 
Tom said:
The Delta has black and largemouth bass, stripers (aka striped bass), and sturgeon, although sturgeon don't show up much in the sloughs. None of  it my preferred fishing, but there's no flyfishing streams for trout around here. Mainly to make it quick and easy to switch baits and lures.
Click to expand...
Being on the water is primary, catching fish is secondary. That's what I tell people when we talk about a slow day on the water.  Funny story, when the kids were growing up we were forced to buy just the basic fishing rod combinations at the local five and dime store while many of our friends had designer rod and reels.  We always filled our coolers with inshore fish when we went out with a simple wooden skiff, with no fancy fish finders and supplemented our many meals for three growing boys from the water.  As they left home and I helped a close friend's son that was in the up scaled tackle business build his own skiff and he gave us the top of the line inshore rod and reel for fishing to replace the well seasoned rod and reel sets. And we purchased a simple black and white depth recorder for our larger skiff that we built. Now we laugh when we come home now with just  enough for a couple of meals tops. But we sure look the part though. ;D
 
Boat Addict said:
Being on the water is primary, catching fish is secondary. That's what I tell people when we talk about a slow day on the water. 
Click to expand...
I used to be a pretty ardent canoeist. I would get up early and be at the local fishing lake by 5:30-6:00 am before the power boaters got there. People just couldn?t get their heads around the idea I just wanted to paddle. Lots of comments as I launched, and it was a bit boring. I solved the comments by taking a fishing rod with me. No bait, just a jig on the end, no tackle box. No more comments, because everyone ?knew? anglers.
 
Being on the water is primary, catching fish is secondary.
Click to expand...
Agreed, but it's tough to beat wading a mountain stream and casting flies to the (shy) elusive trout. I've flyfished since my early teens, and bait fished before that. I grew up with a river at the end of the street, and when first married we lived alongside the river. I'd come off graveyard shift, see the river and, instead of going to bed, I'd go flyfishing all day before returning to graveyard shift.

FWIW I've occasionally flyfished for bass in and around our bay. Need to use lead core to get down 20 feet or so, and a pole cue to pick it up again, unless you retrieve almost all the way back to the boat.
 
sturgeon don't show up much in the sloughs
Click to expand...
Here's Chris' first sturgeon caught on the Sacramento, near 3-mile slough. She got her share of salmon trolling in the Pacific on one of our many trips out the G Gate.
 

Attachments

  • sturgeon.jpg
    sturgeon.jpg
    80.6 KB · Views: 22
  • CJ-salmon.jpg
    CJ-salmon.jpg
    63.2 KB · Views: 20
The Delta has black and largemouth bass, stripers (aka striped bass), and sturgeon...
Click to expand...
Forgot to mention there are lots of bluegill and crappie around our docks; Grandkids used to love catching them, right outside the back door. I'm reminded every time I hop in the water to do some under-deck project or repair ... the crappie keep nipping at my chest  :eek:
 
Wow nice fish!! As it relates to flyfishing, that was really big a while back off the barrier islands and in the ocean off the Carolinas. This shows some of the False Albacore being caught on a fly. These fish are in the tuna family when talking about pulling and their runs when hooked up.

https://www.sal****ersportsman.com/catch-albies-on-fly/

Most of our inshore fishing in the creeks and semi protected bays consist of Speckled Trout and Red Drum. While there continues to be reduced catches as more and more regulations are put on the sportfishermen , at least when we go we can get a few meals from the catches.
 
Looks like a lot of fun fishing for (and catching) False Albacore. The writeup mentions Bob Clauser - is he by chance the guy who invented the Clauser minnow that I tie and occasionally cast to stripers here in the Delta?
 
Tom said:
Looks like a lot of fun fishing for (and catching) False Albacore. The writeup mentions Bob Clauser - is he by chance the guy who invented the Clauser minnow that I tie and occasionally cast to stripers here in the Delta?
Click to expand...

Its quite possible. While I have not done fly fishing, way back when we would fish for sailfish in the winter time and even fish with a kite using live bait . Now that's something that gives you an adrenalin  rush when you see the sails swimming around the bait on the surface and watching the live bait jumping around on the surface as they chase the bait.  If you have not tried that, well that should be on your bucket list.

https://clousersflyshop.com/
 
[quote author=Boat Addict]... watching the live bait jumping around on the surface as they chase the bait.[/quote]
We see something similar during the spring and fall runs of stripers. Schools of bait fish (shad) are "boiling" on the surface as they try to escape the stripers below. Don't need to launch a boat - just head out the back door and down the ramp to the docks with a fishing pole. During the season, I often have rigged casting poles at my back door.

Meanwhile, if I'm out on the water, the birds are a dead giveaway for the location of schools of shad - they're actively diving and coming up with fish.

When seals come into the bay, all bets are off. They'll dive and come up with a striper, then beat the fish on the surface to break open their gut.
 
Meanwhile, if I'm out on the water, the birds are a dead giveaway for the location of schools of shad - they're actively diving and coming up with fish.

When seals come into the bay, all bets are off. They'll dive and come up with a striper, then beat the fish on the surface to break open their gut.
Click to expand...

We get Cobia under big schools of shad around June here by casting big jigs into the bait balls and letting them sink a bit. Billfish will corral huge bait balls and that's a sight. Now since the underwater cameras has improved, the videos are really awesome. I had not heard the story about the seals breaking the gut of the fish.  Hopefully if we get a chance to do some offshore fishing in May we can get some good shots to share.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Members online

Total: 870 (members: 24, guests: 846)

Forum statistics

Threads
131,963
Posts
1,388,300
Members
137,716
Latest member
chewys79
Back
Top Bottom