On The Trail Of Delta Summer Stripers With A Master Troller   By: Cal Kellogg September 9, 2008 More Articles by Cal

The stripers - tens of dozens of them - were stacked up in a narrow 9 foot deep slot bordered by a shallow tule covered sand bar on one side and the rip rap covered bank on the other.

For me school was in session. I was fishing with the delta's premier striper troller, Captain Mark Wilson of Mark Wilson Sportfishing. Mark really had the fish dialed in and I was riveted on his every move in hopes that someday I'll be half as good as he is at dredging up delta stripers while trolling.

"Okay, Cal, let out your plug," Mark instructed as he backed off on the throttle. I free spooled the chartreuse shallow running Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow back 140 feet, engaged the Revo Toro, set the clicker and slipped the rod into a holder.

The largest concentration of stripers seemed to be holding just off a projection in the tules and I was mentally calculating when our plugs would encounter the fish, when my Berkley Lightning rod bent nearly double and line screamed off the reel. My plug was still a good 80 or 90 feet from the spot where I expected the strike to come.

The pressure exerted by the fish running against the drag locked the rod in the holder and I struggled to pull it free. When I got it out and snapped off the clicker, line was still disappearing from the reel at an alarming rate.

Mark cleared his line as he simultaneously brought the boat back around toward my fish. While all this took place in little more than a minute, the striper had taken roughly half the braid off my reel before I won back a few yards of line.

Once I started to gain the upper hand the bass bulldogged for the bottom in classic striper fashion. For the next several minutes I was engaged in a give and take battle, but ultimately the unrelenting pressure of the tackle won out over the brute strength of the striper and I used Mark's Boga Grip to bring my exhausted prize into the boat. After removing the hooks and a couple quick photos we revived the handsome 14 pounder and sent it back into the river in fine condition.

Delta striper fishing is a fall through spring proposition. Stripers migrate into the delta during the fall, hang out through the winter, spawn in the spring and then head down into San Francisco Bay for the summer. Everyone knows this, right?

Well everyone knows this scenario, but that doesn't make it an absolute truth. In fact some of us in the fishing community are beginning to seriously question this long accepted scenario. Anglers that ply delta waters year around such as Mark Wilson have found that they are able to achieve good results on stripers, both large and small, during the dog days of summer when there aren't supposed to be catchable numbers of bass in the delta. For example, the fish I just described fighting was only one of several stripers we caught while working near the Rio Vista Bridge on August 6.

"It's pretty fun catching these big summer stripers that aren't suppose to exist," observed Mark after I released the 14 pounder, our largest fish of the day. "Back in the old days I believed the conventional wisdom that all stripers vacated the delta during the summer and I wouldn't start fishing until September. Then I pushed my start date back to late August, then mid August and finally early August and found that the fishing was pretty darn good in August. These days I catch stripers in the delta during every month of the year."

"During the latter part of June and into July the bite is the slowest, but once August rolls around I start picking up more and more fish with the fall action peaking during October and November," related Mark.

When I asked Mark the areas where he typically finds stripers during the summer he basically told me I was asking the wrong question.

"The keys to catching stripers while trolling in the summer and really at any other time of the year are three fold. First of all you need the right plugs, mainly B-16 Bombers and Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnows that have the correct action. Bombers often require some tuning, while Yo-Zuris run the best right out of the box."

Second, you need to fish where the bass are. "There is no secret spot. I move around until I find fish on my sonar and then I fish them aggressively until I get them to hit," tipped Mark.

Third, you have to play the tides. "The very best trolling takes place on days that feature small slow moving tides. The water stays clean at these times and the bite window is extended. In fact, on a small tide day you can often catch fish all day long," said Wilson.

When the tides are fast or even moderately fast the bite window shrinks and your best chance of catching fish takes place from one hour before the tide change to one hour after the change, disclosed Wilson.

Mark's final works of advice for the aspiring trollers out there in Fish Sniffer land is to vary your trolling speed, but avoid moving much less than 4 miles per hour when running shallow runners and 3 mile per hour with deep runners. Beyond that, he related that nothing can take the place of time on the water.

"Stripers relate to structure and like to feed in shallow water," advised Wilson. "One of the big reasons that we hook so many fish on my boat is that I look for stripers in relation to shallow water structure. As I drive the boat, my mind is on steering the lures past the features and fish that I observe on the sonar unit. My focus isn't so much on where the boat is and where it is traveling as it is on where the plugs are and how they are approaching the fish."

If you would like to take years off the striper trolling learning curve, give Mark a call at (916) 539-1991. I've fished with Mark twice and I can tell you that there are no secrets. He will show you exactly what he does and tell you how to go out and attempt to replicate what he does from your own boat.

Oh yeah, you'll get to catch some bass while you learn. During my outing with Mark we landed an incredible 35 stripers. 20 of them were keepers.

Of the keepers one went 14 pounds one weighed in at 12.5 and several fell between 5 and 9 pounds. On the day we had 3 double hookups and I can't even speculate about how many fish hit and either didn't get hooked or shook free after a second or two!