still fishing minnows for stripers

What is the most productive method?  I've tossed out minnows for large mouths on a bobber with a couple feet of leader before with good results.  I've also heard of guys free lining them out a little bit.  Another method would be to send one down on a sliding sinker rig.  I'm planning on hitting a random slough above Isleton for some striper action sometime this weekend, depths in the area look to be about 6-20 feet. 

try the Scwafish-mendo-style:

basically, it's a carolina rig...with a minnow on the business end. Paddle out and release line while your moving...set the bait about a hundred feet behind you and slow troll some promising areas  Watch your rod tip carefully....once your minnow starts to panic, it's a sure sign that a striper is about to have it for a meal 

Sean wrote a "How to" section but I can't seem to find it 

Good luck!

Yeah..don't know what happened to that article.  We used to drift them under a bobber in the delta as a kid.  Great fun and very effective if the fish are there.

Most of the articles seemed to have gotten lost during the last server move.  Bill has slowly been posting them back up.  I'm guessing it's a manual process from some backup archive. 

Brian

For stripers on the delta I have had the best success with either the three way rig: 3-way swivel tied to your mainline, 5-12" leader off the bottom swivel to your weight (use a lighter line here as most snags catch the weight not the hook), then a 2-6' leader running off the other end of the swivel to your hook. Or the sliding sinker rig: Put slider on your main line then tie on a regular swivel to stop the slider, then 18" to 5' of leader to the hook, you might also want to put a bead above the slider to help keep the debris in the water from catching on the slider. I have fished both of these rigs and I still think the 3-way is out performing the slider.

I prefer drifting for stripers but in a slow current you can troll either of these rigs just keep them off the bottom and use less weight. If drifting maintain contact with the bottom. If you have a FF look for areas in 5-12 ft. of water with a hard bottom, those have performed best for me. Also keep any eye on what the water is doing, the best places I have found seem to be where a fast or faster current is running right near eddies or slower moving water or were there is a good current that stacks up to form a slower moving current. Ex. Were the river or slough takes a sharp bend and the water closer to the middle is moving faster than the water on the bend itself. I'm sorry it is still a working theory and kind of hard to explain. If I understand it right the stripers hold in the slower water and dart out into the faster water after bait being pushed along in the current. Oh which reminds me if drifting or trolling live bait go with the direction of the water, most bait fish aren't capable of swimming against the current and I believe the striper know that and pass up bait traveling the wrong direction. Trollers will go different directions but I think that is more of a reaction bite at that point.

I have caught on the minnows and would advise picking some up just in case but if you can catch some bluegill where you are going they are without a doubt (in my mind) the best bait. Larger bluegill if possible although it depends on what your are fishing for (dinner, keepers, anything that will bite, etc.). I spent a lot of my youth fishing off the Antioch pier with frozen bait and granted we had 100+ fish days out there but very little in the keeper range. I mostly catch and release stripers from the delta now anyway so I am looking for a better quality of fish these days and the larger blue gill separate out the sub-legal fish right quick. I have yet to catch any under 18" stripers using bluegill and I will still pickup under 18" on minnows.

One last thing when fishing live bait for the stripers I use a fairly large hook to help keep them from swallowing it and getting gut hooked also I prefer a circle hook as the stripers always eat (at least the bluegill) head first and take it down like a freight train and on a circle hook they hook themselves, no mouthing here like with dead or cut bait. With the bluegill sometimes you get a warning that a striper is eyeing your bait as the bluegill will go nuts trying to hide or get away. One of my first blue gill caught stripers wasn't actually hooked on the hook, the blue gill just fit in the stripers mouth and the striper wasn't giving it up. I reeled the striper in and was surprised to find my hook still in the bluegill, I had to really do some damage to the bluegill to get my hook out and the striper was released with the bluegill still in its mouth. Talk about aggressive, I've seen lings spit the bait when they come out of the water but this striper was not going to give it up.

Keep in mind I have only been fishing this way for stripers since this winter so I am certainly not any expert here, but on the other hand we have only been skunked once and I was pretty sure that was going to happen that day anyway (fished in Big Break and I was pretty sure the stripers had already pushed further into the delta). Most of the above is my personal opinion and interpretation of what I have read about our stripers coupled with my own personal experience. Again it is a working theory but I don't think there is anything here that doesn't fit with the accepted behaviour of the stripers, just my own spin on somethings. Really important to me is structure!!! And to me the key is the right bottom structure 5-12' with hard bottom and the water itself fast current right next to slow current or eddies. I am pretty confident if you find the right water structure with the right bottom structure if there are stripers around you will be on them.

Last thing: Bring some frozen bait also - if you find yourself in really dirty water try switching to it, sometimes the water is just to dirty for anything but a stink bait to work real effectively.

If you made it through all of that I hope it helps. If you just woke up drooling on your keyboard I'm sorry. 

Jeff

Thanks for the great response guys.  I'm going to try a few of the methods you recommended.  Good stuff.

Kevin

Same here.  Thanks for the detailed descriptions and advice.  Very helpful to a newbie like me.