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9-22-11

Klamath Kings and Steelhead

What a year!. First we had an incredible and surprising run on the Sacramento and now we have even better fishing on the Klamath. We are catching all the adult Kings we want and also sending our guest home with a jack salmon per person. Today, I fished Lee Horton and his fishing partners from Terra Bella and Colusa. They landed 8 nice adults with 3 in the  20 lb. class. We also caught four fat Jack Salmon  that they can add to the BBQ. Today we  filled our quota on adults Kings for the year. This means less boat pressure and awesome catch and release fishing for the rest of the season. You can still keep 3 jack salmon or two jacks and a hatchery steelhead per person. I have always looked forward to the Klamath on low or no quota years. The boat pressure is minimal and the fishing can be fantastic. I will be leaving the Klamath and heading to the Sacramento River at the end of next week. Fishing on the Sacramento is at an all time high. Please call if you would like to get in on what I would call the best Salmon fishing the state has seen in many years.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

9 - 10 - 2011

Limits on the Sacramento River

  Early limits have been the rule this week. I have been getting my guests limits of Kings as early as 9:00 A.M.. Most of the fish are running 6 - 10 lbs. with the occasional fish over twenty being caught almost every day. I will be leaving this  great bite to head to the Klamath. All is not bad though. It sounds like the fishing on the Klamath is even better. I will be on the Klamath through the first of October. We still have a few days left on the schedule if you would like to come up. Salmon and Steelhead fishing should be great throughout the month of September.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

8/14/2011

Sacramento River Salmon are here !!

  The Kings have finally arrived. After a slow bite the past month we are now seeing limits almost everyday. I have been hooking up to 15 fish a day the past week. Most the fish  are averaging around ten pounds but I have had a couple over twenty this week. I would expect the good fishing to continue throughout the month and hopefully into Sept. The first photo is young Hunter Gibson of Rio Oso and the second photo is  10 year old Jamie Cataldo of Long Beach. Jamie hooked and landed her own limit yesterday while fishing with her Grandpa Mike and Father Jon. She actually hooked more fish than anyone. We think part of that was thanks to her Grandpas secret to fishing. I am not going to give her secret away but lets just say it has something to do with the words " Here fishy fishy "

Thanks for checking in and if you would like to get in on this bite, give me a call. I  have next Wed. open at this time.

Mike

Finally back on line !!

  Well after almost ten days we are finally back on line. I  have been having troubles with Earthlink for the past couple of  months. They have done a great job up until this year. I finally decided to change my web hosting to Go Daddy and that is not an easy process. It appears that Earthlink does not like losing business and we had a tough time getting them to release my domain and my past account. Sorry for the inconvenience and lack of reports.

  Salmon fishing has been really tough all over the valley. I have only seen or caught a handful of fish this season. The Feather is really low. There is a few fish caught in the Yuba City area every morning. The upper river is low and clear. I have been postponing trips until things improve. The Sacramento river is kicking out better numbers every day. I got a report of fish finally moving through the bay so lets hope we start to see numbers improve over the next week. On a good note, there is an abundant number of two year old salmon in the ocean. Sounds like next year could be awesome. The picture I posted at the top is a salmon that friend and fellow guide J. D. Richey caught while we were fishing the Woodson Bridge area.  We saw maybe 8 boats and heard of 3 fish caught. I guess we were lucky to get one.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

P.S.

When booking your Goose hunts do not forget we have a new duck field this year. We can accommodate up to 7 hunters and should be a great location for both ducks and geese. The new limits and season this year is the same for ducks but they gave us 6 Specks with a total bag of eight geese.

8 - 01 - 11

Waiting for water.

  Hard to believe but we are still waiting for decent flows so we can fish the Feather. There is a handful of fish being caught around Yuba City but still not enough to start guiding. I cannot believe we are having water issues on a high water year like this. It makes me sick. It is painfully obvious that the D.W.R. has no intentions of ever helping this fishery recover. I will start fishing the Sacramento River next week.

I have a few days available for Salmon. August 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, and 22nd. As always I will contact you a couple days prior  to your trip and let you know of current conditions.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

Friends Mike Gibson and Mario Argüelles showing a few catches from our Mexico trip

  Mexico was awesome. One thing I notice about Mexico in June is that every year is different. This was the year of the Marlin. I am  not a big fan of Marlin fishing but when they are biting like they were this year we had to go for it. We hooked every Marlin we tried for. They all bit  !!  We even caught them on 30lb. test with our light live bait set ups we use for Dorado. The heaviest line we used was 40 pound. This made  Striped Marlin fishing  a whole new exciting game. We caught plenty of Dorado and enough  Wahoo that each guy filled his ice chest for the flight home. Unfortunately we never landed a single Yellow Fin Tuna. Oh well, I guess I will have to go back this summer to fill the freezer with the family favorite "fresh Ahi".

Thanks,

Mike

Click on photo to view video

5 - 15 - 11

Striper fishing is still going strong.

  With the exception of a couple of days the past two weeks, fishing is great. I am not seeing very many big fish but there is still plenty of keepers up to ten pounds to be found. I have been moving all over the place between the Feather and Sacramento rivers. I am doing this to try and find a better grade of fish. I know that catching twenty or more keepers in a day is good fishing but my thought is I should be able to find a school of bigger fish on a high water year such as this year. Both rivers are plugged with the smaller grade of Stripers. Fly-fishing, live bait, trolling, and casting artificial worms and swim baits or jigging spoons is working equally well. Take your pick of what technique you would like to use. Tomorrow we are plastic worm and swim bait fishing,  Thursday we will be fly fishing and Friday I will be back to using live minnows.

  I had two fish in the twenty pound class last week and both fish were fresh hens that we released. I should be on the bigger hens by now but have not had much luck on finding  any substantial numbers of the big girls. I have three fish over thirty and maybe a half dozen over twenty for the year.  I would expect two or three times that on a high water year like this. I  thought I was on them two weeks ago but it never really developed for me. I have been taking a few chances the past couple of weeks to try and find them. My clients have been given the option of settling for big numbers of schoolies size fish or going for the bigger fish. A couple of times we went home just getting our limits. Maybe this will be the week.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

4 - 27 - 11

The big hens have arrived!

Big Hen over Fifty Pounds!!!

This season has been nothing short of being incredible.  We have been landing anywhere from 20 - 40 keepers almost everyday for the past month. I am not counting shakers. We have seen very few fish under the legal size of 18" and some days we don't see any. We have been landing many nice male Stripers in the 5 lb. to 15 lb. category, but the females have finally arrived.  On Monday, John Watson of Santa Rosa caught and released a beautiful 28 lb female on his first Striper trip ever with his son, Travis.  Today was a day to go down in the record books.  The fishing conditions couldn't  been any better with perfect weather and good company on board.  I had the pleasure of taking my daughter out on her annual fishing trip, which happened to be her first trip with Dad in a while. Dad had a bait delivery that was supposed to show up so we decided to go out for a few hours and make the most of a day off.  Good family friend, Sky Borie, also came along for the ride.   And, what a ride it was for the both of them!  Hallie was fortunate to have landed numerous nice looking fish and was quite the fighting trooper.  She was a natural . . .   Sky, on the other hand, he was the lucky angler of the day landing what had to have been the biggest Striper I have seen in years.  The female Striper measured 51" X 28 1/2" and tipped our scale at 48+ lbs!  ( It took over 51 lbs. of certified weight to get my  on board scale to go to 48. This fish was clearly over that.) We savored the moment with many pictures of this beautiful fish, then releasing her safely back into the river for another lucky angler to have the opportunity we did of hooking and landing such an amazing fish. We saw two boats all day and one of them was a good friend of mine. I have been fishing the Sacramento River for over twenty days with very little boat traffic and plenty of nice fish. They (the stripers) are spread out over twenty miles of river. The other guides have finally moved over to the Sacramento but there is plenty of fish to go around. This great fishing should continue to get even better in the following weeks. Give me a call if you are interested in experiencing this great fishery.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

4-23-11

Striper Bite Continues

As predicted the striper bite is fantastic. We have been landing over thirty keepers the past few days with several fish over ten pounds being hooked every day. The biggest we landed this week was a fresh twenty pound hen that was released by Keith Hartman while fishing with his Son Gar. I have a recent opening on May 4th. and 5th.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike

4 - 15 - 11 

High Water Striper Bite!!

The Striper fishing is fantastic. The high water years are always good but this year should be exceptional. We are hooking between fifteen and thirty nice fish a day. Today we found allot of shakers but there was enough nice fish to keep us happy. We even landed a nice fifteen pound chrome bright King Salmon today. Limits have been the rule rather than the exception. I would expect the Striper fishing to only get better. Give me a call if you would like to get in on this great fishery. The big hens should be right around the corner.

Thanks for checking in,

Mike,

530-741-1522