The Monkey Wore Pinstripes   By: Cal Kellogg February 15, 2007 More Articles by Cal

Okay, I admit it. My name is Cal Kellogg and I'm addicted to striper fishing.

That's right I've got a monkey on my back in the form of a big sleek hard fighting bass and I just can't shake it. Now the readers out there are probably wondering how I got to this point. Well, I've been thinking about the same thing myself.

It all started innocently enough when I was a teenager. You know the drill, I tried striper fishing and I liked, so I continued to do it from time to time. However, my participation was strictly casual. I'd do it when good fishing was available, but then I might not do it again for months.

Things stayed like that until fairly recently when I became associated with some big time striper pushers such as Barry Canevaro, Clyde Wands and Bobby Barrack.

They're all nice guys and they all said they'd teach me their approaches to catching delta stripers. What they didn't tell me is that once I'd learned to catch bass on a consistent basis my once casual association with striper fishing would turn into a full blown preoccupation.

I didn't fish Shasta, Eagle or Almanor this fall because I spent most of my free time cruising around the Delta in the Fish Sniffer Jetcraft spanking stripers with a variety of different fishing partners. I figured if I couldn't shed my striper fishing addiction, the least I could do was introduce my friends and family to delta striper fishing and get them hooked on stripers too.

Fall striper season for got started for me back in October when my wife Gena and I spent an afternoon bait fishing Santa Clara Shoal on the San Joaquin River and ended up catching a handsome 7 pound bass on filleted shad. Two days later I was anchored on the shoal once again. This time my dad and brother Erik were with me and Erik ended up nailing his first ever keeper bass in the delta.

A trip with expert delta troller Clyde Wands that produced a number of keeper bass up to 8 pounds topped off the month of October and served as an early indicator of just how productive the fall and early winter striper season would be.

As October gave way to November, I started getting reports of a hot bait bite in Montezuma Slough from Barry Canevaro. When it comes to delta stripers, Canevaro has been my main mentor. As a result I've got a fair handle on how to tempt stripers while balancer fishing with bait and Montezuma Slough, Canevaro favorite haunt, is the west delta waterway that I know the best.

Throughout the month of November the action in the mile long stretch above Nurse Slough was absolutely phenomenal. The water temperature was running between 52 and 55 degrees, which is nearly ideal. On every trip, I could count on steady action and almost every bass that hit took the bait with a sustained clicker screaming run.

Each trip my partners and I took during the month of November resulted in multiple keepers. The bass were of a mixed grade and you couldn't predict whether the next bite would come from a 14 incher or a 14 pounder. Every trip I took during November could have ended with full limits, although the majority of the keepers we caught were released. In all 34 keepers came to the Jetcraft during the month of November. Gene Rush landed the largest bass, a beautiful 15 pounder.

For me the month of December was the most exciting of the fall season for a few different reasons. For starters cold, largely dry weather steadily drove down the water temperature down while the clarity remained good.

With the water temperature hovering at 50 degrees, the result for bait anglers was a sharp reduction in shaker action and a dip in the total number of fish being hooked, but an acceleration in the average size of the bass being caught. During the first week of December I took an overnight trip to Montezuma and spent about 40 hours on the Jetcraft fishing the entire time.

The first day, Gene Rush and I started fishing near Nurse Slough, but when Canevaro gave me a call on the radio and reported that he'd located a big concentration of fish up above the Glass House, we pulled our gear and ran up the slough. When we arrived one of Canevaro's clients was fighting a big fish, so Gene and I didn't waste any time in setting the anchor about 300 yards below Canevaro's boat the Fish 'N' Fool IV. At that point Canevaro's anglers had already boated a pair of quality stripers and the fish we saw being fought turned out to be a bonus 48 inch sturgeon that had inhaled a fillet shad.

It didn't take Gene and I long to get in on the action. Our baits had only been out for a few minutes when a fish took off with Gene's bait on a slow steady run. After giving the fish plenty of time to get the bait in it's mouth Gene engaged the reel and put the brakes on the fish that turned out to be a healthy 11 pounder.

After busting the largest fish in November, the 11 pounder earned Gene the nickname of "Double Digit Rush." To make a long story shorter, we went on to hook several other bass that day and Gene went home with a limit.

After spending a cold uneventful night up in Suisun Slough hoping to hook a sturgeon, I was back at Belden's Landing just after dawn the next day to pick up my dad. Running back up to the area where I'd fished the day before I marked a dense cluster of big arches on the Lowrance that betrayed the presence of large bass.

After dropping the anchor, it took the boat several minutes to straighten out, since the incoming tide had just started to flow. Taking advantage of the slack time, I chopped up about a pound of shad and anchovies and tossed oiling mixture of chum up current, knowing it would roll along the bottom and draw bass up current toward the boat.

After 20 minutes with zero bites I was thinking about repositioning the boat in shallower water, when a fish screamed off with the filleted shad working off the port side. Dad grabbed the rod, disengaged the clicker and let the bass run on free spool for about 30 seconds. When he set the hook, the fish turned toward the boat.

"This is a small fish," dad speculated. "Just keep working the reel," I said. "That eleven we had yesterday didn't really start to fight until we got him up near the boat once."

My prediction proved to be accurate. The bass must have been within 10 feet of the boat when it decided it didn't like the way things were going and took off. For the next 10 minutes dad had his hands full as the bass alternated between running back and for off the stern and holding stubbornly on the bottom. We knew the bass was a good one, but I think we were both shocked by its bulk when the 22 pounder finally wallowed into the net.

For the rest of December and into early January I tried hard to produce a larger bass for myself or one of my partners, but save for one monster that dad lost right aside of the boat after a 15 minute fight we never came close.

With the outdoor shows now underway, I haven't had much time to get out on the water. The last time I fished Montezuma was in early January with Future Pro Tour tournament director Vince Harris and his son Sal. The water was cold, the bite was soft and we had to throw lots of chum to spark up the bass. In the end we were able to boat six stripers for three anglers pushing the season total of keepers aboard the Jetcraft to over seventy, ensuring that my addiction isn't going to subside anytime soon.

At this point the water temperature is hovering in the middle 40's, yet patient West Delta anglers that pay attention to detail are still boating limits of quality stripers. The outlook for the spring season is outstanding. Last year heavy flows in the Sacramento delta drove the bulk of the spring run into the Feather River.

This year we have yet to see heavy rains like we had last winter, so the prospect of having good spring fishing in west delta waters is good. I know of several small back water areas that are holding hundreds of bass. These fish are feeding very little due to the cold water and are very difficult to catch.

When the water temperature inches back up above 50 degrees this spring look out! Those bass are going to be hungry and I expect bait anglers, trollers and pluggers to reap heavy rewards.