Discovery Bay is a gorgeous waterside community located off Highway 4 near the town of Byron. The development consists of more than 3500 homes with miles of channels and protected bays. Water temperatures tend to run a couple degrees warmer here than the rest of the Delta and huge populations of threadfin shad make this a true haven for wintering stripers.

Winter striper fishing on the Delta can be a hit or miss proposition depending heavily on the weather, tides and water temperatures, but when you hit it just right it can be phenomenal. I told my good friend Chris Anderson of Brentwood about the striper bite the previous week and he hit one of his best days ever on Saturday, December 16, when he landed over 20 fish on a fly rod. He stumbled onto a large school of stripers that had a school of shad pinned up against the bank.

"I was right in the middle of a major feeding frenzy and had non-stop hook-ups for the first two hours of the outgoing tide," he explained. "Most of the fish were in the 3 to 7 pound class and I landed two 10 pounders and a 14 pounder."

We decided to start off in Harbor Bay, the area where Chris caught his fish a few days earlier. Three other boats were working the small bay; two of them were jigging spoons out in the main channel and the other was trolling plugs along the rip rap shoreline. As we passed one of the anglers who was spooning in the channel he reported catching one striper and a few catfish. It might sound surprising to spoon catfish, but these bays are absolutely loaded with catfish and it's not unusual to catch several catfish during the day. About half of them are snagged and the rest are mouth hooked.

Near the very back of the bay, I noticed a few seagulls diving on baitfish so we made a straight shot for the birds. No signs of fish were evident, but after years of chasing stripers, I have learned that when birds are hitting the water, there's usually stripers underneath them. I cast out a Zoom Fluke on a 1/4 ounce darter head and let it sink to the bottom. Once settled, I quickly snapped it up off the bottom and was immediately hammered. The fish made a good run straight towards the boat and line was screaming off my light action spinning rod rigged with 6 pound P-line. After a spirited fight that lasted several minutes, we had our first fish of the day, a chunky 6 pounder.

Don threw his fluke into the same spot and began to work it back towards the boat. His rod suddenly dipped and he set the hook into our second fish of the day. This fish was a small keeper, about three pounds, so he released it in hopes of landing something a little bigger. We caught two more fish over the next 30 minutes, one about 7 pounds and the other around 4 pounds. Don also had a big surprise when a 4 pound catfish inhaled his fluke in 20 feet of water. Things finally died down so we headed over to Starboard Bay.

A quick idle around the entire bay produced very little activity on the fish finder. This was surprising because the other bay was absolutely loaded with bait. I finally found a good school of bait with several arches underneath, so we stopped and worked it over with spoons and flukes. About ten minutes into our effort, we noticed several birds hitting the water behind a large dock and I could hear splashing sounds that I knew weren't birds.

I fired up the big motor and quickly moved towards the commotion about a hundred yards away. We were both shaking with anticipation as we rounded the dock. I couldn't believe my eyes when we saw a large seal thrashing in the water. He was playing with a 5 pound catfish, shaking it violently side to side then tossing it 10 to 15 feet across the water. That was the big commotion and I suddenly realized why the bay was seemingly void of any fish. I've seen this before in Mildred Island when a sea lion can move in and completely shut down a wide open bite.

We decided to move as far away from the seal as possible and headed up to Indian Bay. The bay was loaded with bait and fish were showing all over the graph, but we never had a single bite over the next three hours. By 2:00, the tide was just about topped out and we headed back to Harbor Bay to catch the start of the outgoing tide. We only had two fish in the livewell and wanted a couple more to enjoy over the holidays.

Several other boats were now fishing in the bay and a few people reported hooking fish, but none had been landed. We moved back to the same flat where we had taken our fish in the morning and started slow-trolling flukes and Sassy Shad in 15 feet of water. This is a deadly technique for stripers and will consistently outproduce just about any other technique on the Delta. The problem with conventional trolling is the lure is rarely within a foot of the bottom where all the fish are. My tournament partner Jody Jordan of Vacaville showed me this technique several years ago and we have enjoyed tremendous success throughout the fall and winter months. The key is to move very slowly with the electric trolling motor and twitch the bait up off the bottom every two to three seconds. The quick snap of the bait triggers the stripers into biting.

I noticed several sharp arches on the graph and lots of bait scattered throughout the flat. "It looks like the fish have moved back up on the flat," I said to Don. Just as he began to respond a fish grabbed his fluke and was off to the races. Unfortunately the battle was short lived as the fish came unbuttoned about 10 seconds into the fish. A few seconds later, my Sassy Shad was hammered and I put our third fish, a five pounder, in the livewell. While I was putting the fish in the livewell, Don reared back and I couldn't believe he had on another fish. "Almost a double hook-up," I said.

This one was a small keeper, only 22 inches, so we decided to gamble and hold out for a larger fish. Our next three hook-ups resulted in three lost fish and it looked like we were going to have to leave a fish shy of limits because we could only fish until 3:00 and we only had about 5 minutes left. As we trolled out of the mouth of the bay towards the boat ramp, I lucked into another good keeper to top off a great day of fishing. Total count for the day was about a dozen hook-ups with 7 stripers to 8 pounds and a 4 pound catfish.

Merry Christmas All!