Delta Blues

My wife's uncle and his family came to town from Minneapolis last week for a little family visit, so it was only right for us to get in some grade A California fishing while he was here. He's a big walleye and muskey guy from the Midwest, and when we were out there this last summer he put me on a huge walleye, so it seemed only right to take him out to the Delta for a little striper action... but that was just it... very LITTLE striper action...

I'll admit, I have no clue how to fish the Delta, let alone how to navigate it. I know how to fish for stripers, but it's a whole different ball game down there. I've been told that the formula for success in the delta goes something like this: The water temp needs to be about right, the bait fish need to be plentiful, the water clarity needs to be reasonable, the tides need to be right, and you just need to know where the fish hold... ya.... we didn't have any of that stuff working for us. The water looked like chocolate milk, the water temps were in the upper 40's, and we didn't mark a single fish on the finder all day.

We launched at Wimpy's around 7 am and motored down to Beaver Slough where we pricked one schoolie right away, but that was it for the entire day. That "right-off-the-bat" fish is always a bad sign... You catch a fish right away thinking that, "Today is gonna' be a good day!...." wrong....

At least we didn't get skunked. I would've rather had my guest catch that fish, but that's just how it happens sometimes. We fished several other sloughs looking for warmer water trying to find the bait fish... We found some warmer water, but not a single bait ball all day... SSSLLLLLOOOOOOWWW.... but that's what everyone was telling me before we even launched, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised...