Bay Area Freshwater - the Delta 2011

The best option for freshwater fishing in the Bay Area is the Delta - a massive collection of flooded farmland and man-made sloughs at the confluence of (mainly) the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. About an hour's drive from San Francisco, the Delta features a variety of terrain, numerous boat rentals, and fairly shallow-water fishing for, primarily, largemouth bass and striped bass. With its size, it is also better than many areas at handling large numbers of boats. It is that size, though, that also makes it somewhat challenging to fish; getting to know areas of the Delta takes a long time, and many stretches of shoreline look almost exactly the same (and just as productive). Knowing the tides, getting to know the current flows and breaks, knowing water depths and temps and weed growth - all key to finding fish on the Delta. But if you know all that (I don't), and add in a bit of luck, the Delta can churn out some monsters. Many say that it is possible that a world record largemouth (this would be over 22.25 pounds) swims somewhere in the California Delta. Stripers in the 30 pound range are not terribly uncommon during certain seasons (winter, mostly) on the Delta as well. It also holds some monster carp that would be great fun.

Thus far I've made a handful of trips to the Delta this year, with mixed results. Typical results from a late-April day with good numbers but not a lot of size:

Early season - good action for small bass like these

My roommate Evan with a black bass on a wacky Senko

Healthy looking fish..

Very typical schoolie-sized Striper. These guys can be fun, though, when you stumble into a mess of them. This one came on a LV500 in Baby Bluegill.

Many will tell you that the top two baits on the Delta, at any time, are a lipless crank in a crawfish pattern, and a Senko (wacky, texas, whatever). The topwater bite can also be outstanding, especially the frog bite over the thick "cheese" weeds that often build up in the Delta during the summer. I've also had success with any chartreuse and white streamers / clousers.

Later on in the season, in early-July, I made another visit to the Delta on a scorching (mid-90s) hot day. The action was, somewhat predictably, a bit slow. I did manage to scrounge up a pretty decent largemouth on a wacky Senko just outside of Frank's Tract, though.

Decent Delta largemouth.

The other highlight of the day was stumbling into several huge (100+) schools of small (12-14") stripers that were chasing bait near the surface in about 25fow; tossing small crankbaits into the thick of the school yielded hookup after hookup; no monsters, to be sure, but fun action all around.

Schoolie striper on the fly (Rainy's CF Baitfish).

There were some slow days in between, and I'm looking forward to getting out on the Delta in the fall and winter months to chase stripers. Stay tuned...