Well, its here! 2018! Most of the fishing we did last year ended up being on the three lakes, (Shasta-Trinity-Whiskeytown), located near Redding, Ca., but we fished many other areas as well.
2017 started with some excellent Striped Bass fishing in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, but with a massive run due to high water in the Sacramento River system, we also found some great Striper fishing on the Feather River, where we ended our "line side" season.
Mokolumne River morning trip for Stripers!
By May, Whiskeytown and Trinity Lakes were producing some excellent landlocked salmon (Kokanee & King) fishing. Most days were action packed and the Kokanee were above average in size this past year making for some pretty impressive bags of fresh salmon fillets at the end of the day.
Whiskeytown Lake 18" average Kokanee salmon!
By July, Shasta Lake trout fishing was red hot, and we landed numerous trout on every trip which included some trophy rainbows and browns in the 5-7 lb. class. August revealed some bad news for us on the Sacramento River steelhead/trout fishery, in that we saw a major decline in the numbers of fish we were used to catching on our daily trips. We still had fun and caught 20-30 fish most days, but thats a low number compared to what we are used to. It didn't end up being a problem because the lakes were still producing some very good fishing.
Shasta Lake rainbows were big and plentiful in 2017!
By September, we started to see some descent numbers of Sacramento River King salmon. Catch rates were better than expected, but we saw a lot of two year old's which meant our days were yielding salmon in the 7-10 lb. range. With 5-10 fish limits on our local lakes, a lot of our clients opted for lake fishing in lieu of a cane at a few small salmon.
Average size Sacramento River King salmon in 2017... Ugh!
By the end of October we made a move to chase trophy class German Browns on Shasta Lake and I'm so glad we did! We missed out on a pretty good late fall salmon season, but its been very slow in recent years so it was unexpected to say the least. Fortunately our German Brown trout trips produced some great specimens to 7 lbs. and we only had one trip where we didn't land at least one big brown.
The fall spawning migration for the big browns is a great way to end the year!
Overall we were very pleased with how our year came together and we had some very memorable days on the waters we fished. Each and every one of our clients contributed to the season we had and I am so very grateful they chose us to fish with. We learned a lot about the areas we fish and have continued to upgrade our boat and equipment we use to get our clients into as many fish as possible. I'm looking forward to our 2018 fishing season and am especially looking forward to seeing this years clients, both new and old! Now lets go fishing!
