Kids 14 and under are invited to come to Horseshoe Lake in Upper Bidwell Park from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 19, for a chance at the 8,000 pounds of channel catfish that will be planted for the event. Admission is free, along with all tackle, bait and instruction (limit one fish per child). Kids can even have their
catfish cleaned for free.

Since this is a “kids only” lake, no fishing license is required for anglers under 16. Expert local anglers will be on hand as coaches. There will be a separate area for the littlest anglers, age 1 to 5.

There will be plenty of rods and reels available to use free, but all are encouraged to bring their own. Bring your favorite “secret” catfish bait, but please, no lead sinkers at Horseshoe Lake.

With all that help and all those fish, it will be the closest thing to a guaranteed “first fish” for the little ones.

To donate, volunteer, or for more information, call (530) 891-4757. A great time is sure to be had by all!

EDITOR’S NOTE: ”Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs” is a program of the American Sportfishing Association.

So far so good in the 2012 Chinook season as boats continue to find action out of Monterey/Santa Cruz, Bodega Bay, etc. (Photo courtesy Fish On Sportfishing)

Perhaps the best indication of how hot the salmon bite has been the first month of the season (when weather allows, of course) is the “hot bite” alert that Capt. Tom Joseph of Fish On Sportfishing out of Santa Cruz (408-348-4866; fishonsportfishing.com) started to put out a week after the April 7 opener.

After several days of action that he described as “wide open with early limits of cookie-cutter fish between 10 and 15 pounds,”   – often before 10 a.m. – Joseph put his clients on high alert that he would be running double days, and that they’d better be ready to haul ass to Santa Cruz Harbor within two hours of their phone ringing.

Joseph answers the the phone at 7:30 a.m. aboard his 24-foot Seaswirl Striper thusly: “Hey, we got a fish on, I’ll have to call you back.”

And so it goes this season out of the salmon harbors of Northern California.

Joseph reports “a big pod of Chinook moving off of Pigeon Point and Half Moon Bay, too,” where he’ll focus when numbers are good enough to warrant a move to a different harbor. Until then, the Fish On and other Monterey- and Santa Cruz-based boats should continue to score along the 40-fathom line.

And they won’t be alone in their success:While action isn’t blistering hot every day further up the coast, Capt. Rick Powers of Bodega Bay Sportfishing (707-875-3344; bodegabaysportfishing.com) is methodically railing from 15 to 50 (yes, 50) Chinook often enough aboard the 65-foot New Sea Angler that he proclaims the young season one of the best in memory.

“It’s the best salmon fishing I’ve seen in 22 years here, and right from the opener, fish have been parked right outside of the harbor – I burned up 80 miles running down to Point Reyes and then waaaay out west into the deeper stuff the first few days of the season, before I figured out they were right out front,” Powers says.

May Issue on newstands: Check out the rest of the story – and the start of our summer salmon series – in the May issue of California Sportsman, fresh on newstands this week.

Scott Feist of Feisty Fish Guide Service (left) and California Sportsman editor Joel Shangle with limits of stripers from the Feather River below Yuba City.

YUBA CITY – Crucial gear right now for striped bass on the Feather River: 9-inch black reapers or ribbon-tail worms on a Texas-rig, a Frabill portable aerator to keep your jumbo and extra-large minnows alive, and the directions to Johnson Outdoors in Yuba City. If the minnow bite continues like it has the past several days, you may make more than one trip to Johnson, which is the largest live-minnow purveyor in Northern California.

Local guide Scott Feist of Feisty Fish Guide Service – who has been polluting the Internet for weeks with photos of quick limits of stripers taken on jumbo minnows and black/red flake plastic worms below Yuba City –  indicates that a large bunch of stripers has recently spawned and are making their way back down the Feather as we speak. Consequently, as the days progress, you’ll want to fish lower and lower in the system (below Bear Creek and down).

Fishing with Feist on a quick morning on the big flats below Bear Creek, we schwacked limits of 4- to 6-pound keepers, dozens of smaller schoolies and bigger fish to 16 pounds, which we released. You can have fish-after-fish action on minnows (both jumbo and extra large), and can coax the bigger fish to bite by pitching big Texas-rigged plastics along ledges and seams.

This bite won’t last as long as it did last year, though, when Feist was still fishing stripers into mid-June.

“Because of the water conditions this year, it’ll be mostly done by the end of May,” Feist says. “For the next few weeks, though, it’ll be so good it’s silly.”

The barrel and forend of the Ruger 10/22 Takedown are easily separated from the action and buttstock by pushing a recessed lever, twisting the subassemblies, and pulling them apart. Reassembly is the reverse of takedown, and is quick and easy. The friction fit lockup of the assembly joint is simple to adjust, but will rarely need re-adjustment after the first assembly. The lockup is secure and repeatable, ensuring an accurate return to zero, even when receiver-mounted optics are used.

The Ruger 10/22 Takedown is shipped in a ballistic nylon backpack-style case that features internal sleeves which hold the subassemblies. External pockets with MOLLE webbing provide storage for magazines, ammunition, and other accessories. Multiple attachment points for the padded, single shoulder strap offer different carrying options.

The 4.67-pound Ruger 10/22 Takedown is 37″ long when assembled; each subassembly is less than 20 1/4″ long when disassembled. Utilizing the standard 10/22 action and ten round rotary magazine (one magazine is provided), the Ruger 10/22 Takedown offers legendary 10/22 reliability in a compact and portable package.

For more information on the new Ruger 10/22 Takedown, or to learn more about the extensive line of award winning Ruger firearms, visit www.ruger.com or www.facebook.com/Ruger. To find accessories for the Ruger 10/22 Takedown, like the 25-round Ruger BX-25® magazine, visit www.shopruger.com

The basis of the mapping system is a color coded layer that shows all up-to-date public and private landownership and distinguishes actual entities that own the parcel.  The PLAT series even includes landowner names and the private property boundary lines and has expanded to 11 western states.  The addition of landowner names is one of the most usable tools for sportsmen heading to the field.  Other standard map features are 24K topo, hunting unit boundaries, counties, township-range-section numbers, roads, trails, water features, etc.

These remarkable products are designed to let sportsmen know the location of all public and private property boundaries along with landowners’ names while in the field, real-time!  A key benefit of the map is having the user’s GPS location plotted on the map which saves the user time and frustration trying to determine their location on a paper map.

HuntingGPSmaps currently has maps available for all Western states and most Midwest states.  For more information on HuntingGPSmaps visit www.huntinggpsmaps.com or call 208-GPS-MAPS.

Fishing for landlocked Chinook, like this one landed by a client of Kirk Portocarrero of SacRiverGuide.com, picks up from late March through June. (Photo courtesy www.sacriverguide.com)

By Andy Martin

Many Golden State anglers get their salmon fix at some of Northern California’s deeper reservoirs, including Shasta Lake, where fishing for landlocked kings peaks from late March through June.

“You can catch them year round, but the best months for salmon at Shasta are late March, April, May and June,” says longtime Redding guide Kirk Portocarrero (www.sacriverguide.com), who spends considerable time in late winter and spring trolling the depths of Shasta for the feisty landlocked kings.

Extra Chinook smolts from Northern California hatcheries are released into Shasta Lake. Prevented from heading to the ocean, the salmon become ferocious predators in the lake, feasting on shad and other small fish and quickly increasing in size. Most of the Shasta Lake kings run 3 to 5 pounds, but each year Portocarrero gets clients into salmon topping 8 pounds.

“Trolling shad patterns is the key,” Portocarrero says. “The shad come up in the spring time months.”

Finding fish
Landlocked kings are spread throughout the lake, but the coves and inlets near the dam produce the most consistent fishing.

“The three best places for king salmon at Shasta Lake are the Dry Creek Arm, the dam area and Big Backbone,” Portocarrero shares.

Using downriggers, anglers troll deep for the salmon, dragging plugs or spoons to depths of 130 feet.

“I don’t work the shoreline,” Portocarrero tips. “The troll the channels. The salmon like the deep water.”
As an example, Portocarrero will sometime begin fishing over 175 feet of water, and drop his downriggers to 130 feet. Fishing multiple rods, he’ll stagger the baits at different depths until he finds where the fish are.

Avoid trolling too fast, the veteran guide says. He likes to troll 1.5 mph.

“If you go too fast the lures I like to use don’t work,” Portocarrero says.

He also uses bigger lures than most trout trollers use, as he’s targeting bigger fish.

“If you want big fish on that lake you have to go big,” according to Portocarrero. “I use lures that are 2 ½ inches to 3 inches. You are fishing for fish to 8 pounds.”

Aside from large landlocked kings, big browns also are occasionally caught.

“We got a 10 ½-pound brown the other year at 100 feet trolling right in front of the dam,” Portocarrero says.
Trophy rainbows also will be caught.

Adding scent is key for catching kings on plugs. Pautzke’s krill scents are a favorite of Portocarrero.

“I scent it up real heavy with Pautzke Liquid Krill,” he says.

Spotted bass on the bite
The Shasta king bite coincides with some of the best bass fishing of the year at Shasta. Late winter and early spring is also when the plentiful Shasta spotted bass begin to bite.

Some anglers will buy live minnows from bait shops spread through the lake area and fish them in coves without weight or below a bobber. Others like plastic grubs.

Early season bassers target the deep dropoffs in the McCloud and Sacramento arms, then work the coves and timber areas on the Pit River Arm.

Trophy catfish also begin to bite well as spring approaches. Plunking while anchovies is one of the best methods of big Shasta cats.
-CS

In mid-March, the salmon-lottery players among us all came to a screeching halt when the Pacific Fisheries Management Council rolled out this gigantic numeral: 2.4 million. Unless you’ve been vacationing in Antarctica or the moon, you probably know that that number is the total projected return of fall Chinook to the Klamath and Sacramento river systems in 2012. The Klamath is forecasted for just under 1.6 million, the Sacramento just over 800,000.

Ocean abundance is apparently at a high. This is why you heard jaws dropping from Crescent City to Santa Barbara last month as an astounded Chinook Nation first laid their eyes on a number that, frankly, is difficult to digest.
To wit: The 1.6 million fall kings supposedly headed back for the Klamath would be 2,300 percent – TWENTY THREE TIMES – the number of Chinook that returned to the system in 2008 and almost triple any previous forecast benchmark.

Taken with a healthy grain of salt – these forecasts are powered by in inordinately high Chinook jack counts in 2011, and you can ask your friends in Washington and Oregon how accurately jack-count predictors are (google “Columbia River spring Chinook forecasts” sometime). As Mike Augney at USA Fishing states:  “From a distance this coming season looks pretty hot, up close I’m in the “looks kind of strange to me” camp. Ocean abundance estimates are questionable and subject to being more of a wild ass guess or, the WAG theory. Ocean abundance estimates have been grossly over-estimated that past several seasons.”

Even so, we’re swinging for the fences. The numbers got our attention. The April issue marks the start of a five-month salmon barrage in the pages of California Sportsman that’ll take us from the Oregon border to the Channel Islands, and as far up the Sacramento and Klamath systems as fall Chinook swim. I’ve begun my salmon-expert “fantasy draft” with Kenny Priest – check out his preview of the Eureka/Trinidad fishery on page 64 of the April issue – and am adding more all-stars for May, June, etc.

If you’re looking for salmon info, this web page is the place to start.

Share your photos: I’d like to see your salmon catches! Drop me an e-mail at joel@calsportsmanmag.com.

A ton of trophy trout were added to the biomass at Lake Isabella this week, in anticipation of this coming weekend’s derby.

With Mike Mencarini

KERNVILLE – Existing in a world of West Coast derbies where you’ll see a pot of over $100,000 for a halibut derby, and maybe $50,000 for a salmon derby, it always make me giggle a little when I tell someone about a trout derby – yes, T-R-O-U-T – with a $250,000 prize pool attached to it.

It’s that time again, boys and girls: the 23rd Annual Isabella Lake Fishing Derby takes to the waters of Lake Isabella March 31 through April 1, and here’s no April foolin’: more than a few anglers will walk away from that derby with checks in the five figures.

Trophy trout join the party: Final prep for the derby continues as the Kern River Valley Chamber of Commerce, with the help of Mt Lassen Trout Farm, planted 2,000 pounds of trophy trout this week.  These trout, in addition to the approximately 10 tons of derby trout waiting to be planted throughout the lake at the end of this week, will boost the action for an event that’s rightfully nicknamed “The Biggest Trout Derby in the World.”

As the derby approaches the day before the start, the feeders have had several days off, and the logistics of arranging the boats and boat captains – along with the fish handlers – takes center stage. The boats are fitted with aerated tanks for the planting of the trout to all parts of the lake. The day prior to the March 31 kickoff, the handlers will net a pre-determined amount of trout for the stocking of non-tagged fish. Once the planting is done, each boat captain will be issued an envelope with a set number of tags; each boat will have a person responsible for physically reconciling each tag to its place on the tag information form. Also on every boat there is a netter, a tagger, and an official observer who matches approximately the fish’s size so it corresponds to the tag number, for reference.

After all the fish designated to be tagged and released are stocked (if you were wondering no one has any idea which tags are worth what) the outdoor part of the event is done.

Tagged trout payout: The derby will have one tagged trout worth $20,000 and 10 tagged trout worth $10,000 apiece. An additional 989 are worth $50 to $1,000. If the $20,000 tagged trout, sponsored by the Kern River Valley Chamber of Commerce, is caught while wearing the official 2012 Isabella Lake Fishing Derby T-shirt or hoodie during the three-day event, that prize will double to $40,000. If not caught during the derby, the $20,000 tagged trout will be worth $1,000 from April 3 to May 3, 2012

The deadline to register online is this Wednesday, March 28th at 9 pm.  For easy online registration, go to www.isabellafishingderby.com . For more information, call the Kern River Valley Chamber of Commerce (760) 379-5236

This is where Joe Everett will ply his trade for the next two month, in search of “The One”. Not to be confused with Trev Gowdy’s TV show of the same name, Everett’s “The One” is the big momma bass of all time: The largemouth that will eclipse Manabu Kurita’s 22.31 world record, wrest the title away from Lake Biwa, Japan, and bring it back home to Everett’s home haunt, Mission Viejo Lake.

Everett has earned a unique position in the national bass world. Those who know him personally and who have fished with him will tell you that he’s a world-class angler, and there’s no disputing the fact that he’s one of the most creative big-bass hunters in history. Some of his baits look like they came off the shelves of Toys R Us or out of the stock room of Ballyhood, with plastic appendages and giant, badass-looking profiles that would cause a 5-pound largemouth to have a heart attack.

Everett has also – as he puts it – “dodged the bullets” of naysayers and critics who put him down as a “one hit wonder” because he focuses almost exclusively on Mission Viejo.

You can call him whatever you want, but I’m here to tell you that Joe Everett will break the International Game Fish world record for largemouth one day. Maybe this year. Maybe this month. Maybe today.

He started the year off early this week with a 15.14-pounder (you heard me right, first fish of the season was 15.14). He’s convinced he’s seen the world record, knows where she lives, and thinks he knows how to get her to bite. He’s convincing as hell when he describes this fish, because you can see an almost feverish look overtake his face.

“I’ve seen her, brother!” he’ll exclaim. “That fish is going to turn the world upside down.”

And so, I think, is Joe Everett.

So we go on Joe Watch. As you read this, Everett is probably standing at the trolling motor, in search of “The One”. Check the California Sportsman website frequently this month – I’ll keep you updated.