West Coast saltwater (well brackish really) fly action

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duramax
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West Coast saltwater (well brackish really) fly action

Postby duramax » Thu Nov 05, 2015 2:43 pm

I was just outside of Sacramento last week on business and managed to squeeze in some striper fishing on the last afternoon before catching an early morning flight. My friend and I joined up with a great (and very affordable I may add) fly fishing only guide and went out for 4-5 hours. My friend is not a fly fisherman, and only a novice at fishing in general, so I brought my heavier salwater spinning rod and gear to use. The guide hadn't had conventional gear on his boat in 5 years, so he was curious as to how well it would work.

The Sacramento Delta is unlike anything I've ever seen before. The actual river system is influenced by the tide, but is well inland. It's also contained entirely by levees with farmland surrounding the river delta that is at least 10 to 20 feet below the levees. I couldn't imagine what would happen if the levee broke. It's very strange. The actual river system is marshy looking, with an abundance of hydrilla like weed growth (that has only been present in the last 10 years) but has dredged out 50' deep channels.

We fished topwater a bit with little success. My friend caught a dink striper around a pound or so on a small spook. We switched over to deeper presentations when the tide really started ripping. It made fishing sinking fly line quite challenging when you have to let it sink 10-15 seconds before stripping it in. My buddy caught a couple more dink stripers and a couple small largemouth bass, but I still was a blank for the first hour of fishing.

We made a move down river as the tide slowed and finally got on the fish. We made drifts over one particular drop off and either hooked up, or missed fish each pass. I managed 1 8lb fish and one around 5lbs intermingled with a few dinks. The stripers out there are much more streamlined in profile than the landlocked reservoir or even east coast varieties, and proved to be even more athletic than their eastern cohorts. My 8 lb fish was around 28", and would be over 10lbs easy out east. He took a decent chunk of backing on his first run and I figured I was hooked up with a 15-20lb fish. I was very surprised when he rolled up to the boat and was just an average sized fish. I couldn't imagine what a 20lb fish out there would do to my 8wt.

We picked up a couple more small to medium size fish in the 1-4lb range and called it a day at dark. All in all we probably caught around 20 fish. Slower than normal he said, but we got there a couple days after the temps dropped about 20 degrees and he felt it slowed the fish down.

It was still a very cool experience and have fallen even more in love with stripers. The really are a fantastic fish that almost hands down is the hardest fighting fish you'll find in fresh water.

Here's a couple pics of the 2 bigger fish I caught.



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