Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 3715 July 6-20 2018 | Page 3

Up-To-Date and Published Locally... By Sportsmen... For Sportsmen! Caples Lake Map Feature MADE IN U.S.A See Page 18 Vol. 37 - ISS.15 Our 36th Year I July 6 - 20, 2018 Since 1982 “The Magazine for West Coast Sportsmen!” Two Days Of Hardcore Fishing Aboard The Happy Hooker! spent June 14 & 15 aboard Berkeley’s iconic Happy Hooker with two large and super enthusiastic groups of Fish Sniffer readers. When Captains Chris and Jonathan Smith and I settled on the dates for these trips well over a month ago, live bait potluck fishing inside San Francisco Bay was wide open for striped bass and halibut. There were lots of keeper and shaker size fish being caught along with a daily sprinkling of monster halibut to 40 plus pounds and the occasional white sea bass. This action had been going very consistently for weeks, so while the dates I’d picked out featured some pretty big tides we weren’t worried. Big tides can mean slow live bait fishing, but the fishing had been largely immune to the level of tidal flow. Charter boats had been scoring well during small tides, but they had also been experiencing solid action on days with big tides. For example, I was on the California Dawn on June 1 during a large tide and we did very well, boating limits of stripers and a nice collection of halibut to 15 pounds. On that trip, I personally caught 4 keeper halibut and 6 keeper bass, so the prospect of fishing during big tides didn’t scare me at all. Yet the one fact we all decided to ignore is that saltwater fishing success can change on a dime. It can be hot today and slow tomorrow, slow today and hot tomorrow and a bite that had been steady for days or even weeks can evaporate overnight and that’s exactly the situation we found ourselves in on Thursday June 14. We had 29 anglers aboard the Happy Hooker that day looking INSIDE Area Reports FRESHWATER REPORTS Almanor/Bucks Lake - Amador Lake.....................4 American River - Camanche Lake.......................10 Carson Pass Region - Davis Lake ......................14 Del Valle Reservoir - Eastern Sierr a.............. 16-17 Feather River - New Melones Lake.....................21 Oroville Lake - Quarry Lakes...............................22 Rancho Seco Lake - Rollins/Scotts Flat....... 24-25 Sacramento Area - West Delta..................... 26-27 SALTWATER REPORTS Berkeley - Half Moon Bay.....................................31 Monterey Bay - Peninsula Shoreline............... 32-33 Where...When...How... by Cal Kellogg I Special Section Baja Roundup PG 34-35 FEATURES GONE FISHING With tides slowing back down, halibut action is expected to get on track inside the S.F. Bay. Photo courtesy of HAPPY HOOKER SPORTFISHING, Berkeley. CONTINUED ON PAGE 24 Wind, Wine, and Whoppers at Whiskeytown bag of chips. Two boats trying to troll on my port side looked like crabs slinking sideways across the lake surface. Their downrigger booms and rods extended in every direction were like tangled crab legs, but were of no use in keep- ing their vessels straight. My wife Gina asked, “Are they supposed to cut in front of us like that?” My answer was that in wind gusts over 20 miles (925) 428-1103 www.dragonsportfishing.com per hour, the rules of the road go out the window. We had to focus on the ability to avoid collisions. Even this seemingly Jack Naves caught several quality kokanee while fishing the Kokanee Power Derby at simple task became Whiskeytown reservoir including this big sockeye. difficult at times. Photo by JACK NAVES, Fish Sniffer Staff. Fishing became winced as a blasting downdraft ruffled my straw hat and blew over a 36 Years Serving Sportsmen secondary in the gales of June at Whis- keytown. Whiskeytown Lake is usually a beau- tiful place to fish, featuring a healthy population of some of the biggest kokanee in the state. It’s nestled amongst green plunging hills about 8 miles west of the town of Red- ding, California. Whiskeytown features some interesting land- marks, including a barrel-lined cold water cur- tain, and a high voltage power pole on its own custom island. The towering steel struc- ture stands guard of the Whiskey Creek arm of the cobalt-colored lake. The 2018 Kokanee Power derby at Whiskeytown Lake was a two day WHAT’S HOT by Jack Naves CONTINUED ON PAGE 25 New California WaterFix Environmental Document with ‘Design Changes’ Released See Page 28 SALMON JOURNAL...................................6-9,11-13 BAJA ROUNDUP...............................................34-35 BASS FISHING SPOTLIGHT: Cal Kellogg................. 20 BULLETIN BOARD................................................... 4 FISH SNIFFER HOW-TO: Cal Kellogg................... 15 GO FOR IT: Staff..................................................... 23 KAYAK FISHING SPOTLIGHT: Cal Kellogg.............. 5 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR...................................... 3 MAP FEATURE: Dan Bacher.............................18-19 SALTY TIPS: Steve “Hippo” Lau............................. 34 SPOTLIGHT ON CONSERVATION: Dan Bacher..... 28 WHAT’S HOT SALTWATER: Dan Bacher .............. 30 STAFF TACKLE What We’re Using Cal Kellogg - fished French Meadows Reservoir for rainbow trout. Cal employed a 7’ Fenwick HMG 70 ML rod rated for 4 to 10 pound test matched with an Abu Garcia Revo SX spinning reel. The reel was spooled with 6 pound Trilene and a 6 lb. Vanish fluorocarbon leader was employed. Cal caught 5 rainbows while soaking both PowerBait and Zeke’s Sierra Gold. Orange was the hot color. Paul Kneeland - fished Lake Oroville with Gary Caruso and John Brassfield of Auburn in The Fish Sniffer Rogue Jet 21 Coastal. They caught landlocked King Salmon to 16 inches using Cousins 7’6” ultra light graphite downrigger rod with a Abu Garcia Revo MGX Extreme level wind reel loaded with 6 lb test Yozuri TopKnot fluorocarbon line. They trolled Mack’s Lures orange/green Cha Cha Squidders with a strip of anchovie, behind UV chrome/orange Sling Blades off the Canon Downriggers 40 to 60 feet deep at 2.4 mph. Dan Bacher - fished for rainbow trout at Caples Lake. He used a Berkley Ugly Stick GX2 6’ 6” medium action spinning rod, teamed up with a Shakespeare GX235 spinning reel filled with 6 lb. test P-Line CX Premi- um Flourocarbon Coated Line. He fished with chartreuse Berkley PowerBait, 1/8 oz. gold and black Panther Martins and 2/5 oz. gold/orange stripe Little Cleos.