Del Valle - 2/28 - No Trout Love But...

Met James and Chris at the ramp around 7AM. Was going to head up to the dam but James said they were going to fish the south end first. I was thinking that trolling wouldn't be good because the water was really stained.   I decided to hang with them and Chris bagged a nice striper. After an hour of trollling for nada I headed up to the narrows to find better water clarity. Eventually ran into Jay and Theresa. Marked a lot of fish suspended from 18-30 feet down in 40-90 FOW. Figured they were trout and/or stripers so changed to a 1/4 oz firetiger Kastmaster fished on the downrigger at 20 feet and a Rapala TDD9 Rainbow which dives to  20'. Figured a striper would hit the TDD9 and a trout would hit the Kastmaster.   Trolled this combo for an hour for nada. Ran into Jay and Theresa in the narrows around 11AM and told them I was going to head in. About 10 minutes later, the Kastmaster gets hit hard, zzzzzzzzzzzz. Around this time of year, my reels only have < 200 feet of line and the first run almost spooled my reel. I was down to 5 turns of line on my reel so I paddled to chase the fish so I could gain more line. Finally started to gain line and after 15 minutes brought it to the boga, and weighed in at 7# and 27".  8# test line seemed too light for this fish.   Molly had a good time and did her retriever thing settling for sticks since a duck didn't fall out of the sky. My personal best DV striper. Life is good. 

Scott

WTG

Very nice! Congrats on the striper Scott.

Jedmo

NICE STRIPER!!!

congrats on the nice striper, cameron

Nice n fat too, good to see people fish while some of us work weekends.

adrenaline pumper  nice

That's also one big stick that Molly was swimming with. How hard was it to get her out of the water?

Good to see you out there today Scott! Theresa and I skunked but had a nice paddle anyhow. The water seriously needs to clear up, or I need a downrigger.

actually it was james and chris, but that is ok, we trolled to the second narrows and had lunch, soaked some bait hooked 5 landed 2, trolled towards the damn i got a nice bow on a gold and black rapala and then headed back to the ramp 3 trout and a nice 26" stripper, and lost about 5 fish. See you in march for the bbq 

Scott-

Great job on the striper. That must've been a fun fight on such light line. Nice size fish for the steamer... yummmmmmmmm....

Freddie

Nice fish and report Scott.  Thanks Andy

scott, line is cheap, what were you thinking? 

nice striped-trout.

Nice catch Scott!!!

8# test line seemed too light for this fish.

6 to 8 # mono is standard issue for the typical 30 inch stripers at Mendo - light line is the way to go Guitarzan and I caught mendo stripers with 4 # line.....THAT was a HOOT!!!!

Nice!