With Delta water temperatures hovering around the 50 degree mark (to be exact, 50.5!) the striper bite has really turned off over the previous week. I now declare the fall striper season over (unless some unseasonably warm weather hits!) and the winter striper season is now starting. When water temps hit 50 (and below) the stripers metabolism really slows down and they become very non-aggressive to the fly. Sure you can still catch a few fish, and the average size really increases, but...... Gone are the arm jolting, finger burning & cutting strikes of the fall season, and the fast retrieves that can work so well. Now, long pauses in the retrieve (and I mean long, 5-10 seconds and more) and slow stripping is the norm, with long periods of no fish. The takes can be quite subtle, more like a small tap, and in many instances you won't even feel the take (so set that hook with a long hard pull if you think somethings fishy, otherwise you may never know!). Quite boring actually! I'll still be going out on nice days, but at a fixed cost of $70 a trip (gas, oil, launching)(and I'm not even counting the cost of my boat-don't even want to go there!) I won't be spending near as much time at the Delta. It's actually time to start steelhead fishing!
To briefly summarize my fall striper season, for the first time I can actually say my fishing results actually mirrored what the biologists are saying about the health of the Delta, with an ecosystem in deep trouble. In short, my fall season sucked! The number of stripers caught was about average to above average, but the quality (size) of the stripers was very poor related to my usual results. This is the first fall that I did not land at least one very large fish in over 5 years, numbers were way down of fish in the 5-10 pound range, and the big fish for next year (3-5 #) were also way down from previous years. I really only had two weeks of what I call "good fishing" during the entire season (I usually get 3-4 weeks).The only good news is the number of "dinks" (fish under 18") was way up, but I don't know if this is because the bigger fish were simply not around in large enough numbers to chase them into cover or there were really more dinks present. I suspect the former. My son, a fishery biology student at UC Davis, participates in biological sampling of the Delta, and reports that the baitfish, and lower level food sources (such as plankton), have hit alarmingly low levels in the Delta, potentially indicating serious ecosystem problems. I only hope that it is my fishing skills that sucked this year and not a future trend of this wonderful fishery. I'd like to hear what some of the other "Delta Regulars" think about this season.
