April Striped bass fishing on the Sacramento River has been really good some days and lackluster on others, but we’re getting limits of Striped bass every trip for our clients.

We’ve been a little weak on our fishing reports this past month, but our fishing was derailed at the end of March by the COVID-19 situation. We halted operations for a month to make sure we could better understand the dynamics of this outbreak, and how to make sure our clients and guides could safely fish together. Shasta County was minimally affected by the virus and less than 30 positive cases have been reported to date. Still a scary situation so all the necessary precautions were taken. Thankfully, no one on the team was exposed and all of us spent considerable amount of time at home catching up on projects that were left undone. The downtime was good to us, but its time to start getting back to work.

Specifically, the Striped bass fishery on the Sacramento River is in full swing and we’re seeing the peak of the run in the Colusa area start to swing the other way. The flows have dropped with the irrigation pumps running non stop which has the river levels down and water temps up. This won’t stop the Striped bass from migrating up to spawn, but it does reduce the amount of time a group of Stripers will stay in the upper river before spawning and returning back to the California Delta. This puts the Stripers on the move and keeping track of where they are schooling is key. Keeping guides on the river is beneficial to our success and we definitely have that covered.

Drifting live minnows through holding water is a very productive technique so thats the technique we deploy most of the days we fish. Occasionally we can use other methods to catch Stripers, but for most of the groups we fish, drifting minnows is best. If this is a technique you would like to learn or just sounds like fun, we have some availability left for Striped bass fishing trips in May. We expect to experience good Striped bass fishing through the end of May. If this trip sounds like something you would like to experience, please give Jaynie a callas the office to set up your trip. She can be reached at (530) 510-2925 or by email at jgoodwinguideservice@yahoo.com. Thank you!

Capt. Jeff Goodwin