Xtreme-Angling hit the water to give our new motor a test run and partial break-in this weekend, as well as test the current fishing conditions on the Sacramento River.
We hit the water for a half day in the afternoon/evening on Friday May 2nd to see what the river had in-store for us.. We ended up with 8 keeper stripers to the boat, and a few misses. The good bite resulted in very consistent action. The majority of the fish were coming on live minnows rigged on a three way swivel with a 1 oz dropper weight. We caught fish on anchor as well as drifting along with the current. We switched to casting artificial’s as the sun went down and into the darkness. Several more fish were hooked by swimming a Fluke on a jighead along the bottom in 6 – 9ft of water.
Back on the water for another half day, Sunday May 4th to see how the Shad bite is going. My group had never caught Shad before and was excited to see what the day had in store for us. Very quickly after setting anchor in 6ft of water, we started hooking into fish. At one point we had 2 fish landed on the two grub rig that I am using.
We thought it was a very strong fighting shad until we saw that there was 2 hook on at the same time. Spiderwire Ultimate Monofilament in 6lb line and a light action spinning rod really gives a great sport to catching these hard fighters.
Our fish ranged between 1.5 lbs- 3lbs. Each slow time period was rewarded with quick action after a new school would move in behind the boat. The best color today was a pink/sparkle 1.5″ grub. We also caught fish on white and quite a few on chartreuse/sparkle in the 1 -1.5″ curl tail grubs. I rig my grubs on a dropper rigs with 2 separate grubs and a 1 – 2oz weight at the bottom.
After catching our share of the fun sporting fish, we had about an hour left in our day and I asked if we wanted to try to do a drift for stripers. After full agreements, I ran upriver and setup 3 rods for a quick drift with minnows that I got from a friend on the water. After less then 10 minutes one of the rods starts pumping and a fish was on. This fish fought extremely well on the 7′ medium action Abu Garcia rod and Abu Garcia Revo Winch reel, rigged with 12lb Spiderwire Ultimate Mono. I used a 1/2oz dropper weight to get the minnow down as we slow trolled downstream with the current. We finished our drift and got off the water to get everyone headed home to prepare for work that evening.
For your next Fishing Adventure in Northern California please give us a call. Don’t forget to check us out on Facebook for our tackle pack giveaways.