San Joaquin River Visverslagen

The much anticipated October 1 Sturgeon opener has come and gone, and here are the results: Wednesday 10/1: The first day is always the toughest, but this year we landed right on them. The fish started biting within 10 minutes of our anchor, hitting the ground and didn't stop for several hours. We ended up with 15 bites that resulted in nine Sturgeon landed to the boat, three fish that were lost mid battle, and three outright missed bites. You just can't ask for any more than that. Friday 10/3: On Friday, we went back for more of the same and found good action. Not quite as good as Wednesday, but we still managed seven really nice sturgeon to the boat for our group. Saturday 10/4: A totally different story for us on Saturday. We went back to the original starting point to find the fish had scattered, and we're not as cooperative as they had been. Which resulted in two fish after a couple of hours of fishing. We made one slight move picked up a third fish. As we were getting close to the end of the day, I decided let's give this area, arrest and take a look on our way back in. And, why am I glad we did that. On the final step of the day, the fish were biting in the bottom of the boat off. Within the last hour of our trip, we landed six big Sturgeon, including two doubles and two single hook ups, which gave us a total of nine fish for the day. We couldn't be happier for the way the season has begun. We are looking forward to a long season of fighting hundreds of Sturgeon for our clients. We still have lots of openings for October and November, which are sure to be really good months with lots of opportunities to catch big Sturgeon Give me a call or book straight on our website. Either way we're looking forward to hearing from you or seeing you on the water. **hidden content** **hidden content** Our schedule is open to book Sturgeon trips between October 1st and April 30 2026

We’ve been enjoying the fall bite with topwater dominating the action, but mixing in good quality with the dropshot (reds and pinks best bite). The frog bite is still happening when we find good weeds, but right now we have to do frog specific trips since it required a longer run to get to the better frog water. Book a trip. Its super fun right now.

Fall on the Delta is my favorite time to fish. Went out today to prefish for a trip coming up and wanted to see if the fall transition bite had started. Good news for clients, the bite is here and the slime weeds that fill these flats is almost all gone. We will fish topwater in current cuts that lead to flats and depending on which direction the tide is flowing it positions the fish in a way that makes it predictable for bites. With clients we will move through the areas quickly with big topwater baits and then turn around and slow down and pick apart the same areas with slower topwater finesse type baits and some senkos if the water is high enough. It is super fun right now. Book a trip!

The bite is consistent with numbers and mixed in with some really good size. The pic of this 7.5 lb bass was caught on a chatterbait at the last part of low tide. Book soon.

Water temps at 73° on the surface and Shaker Stripers are everywhere on the rivers. We spent 6 hours fishing multiple spots on both the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers out of the Rio Vista area. We ran all the common baits for this time of year and caught 5 fish. We are still waiting on the salmon to start coming up the Mokolumne River as well. The previous week, we were on the Mokolumne looking for signs of salmon, and we appeared to be the only boat even trying on a Saturday. The fish are still waiting for that cooler water to come down from the lakes when they start lowering them in preparation for winter rains. There will be plenty of fishing these next few weeks as we will be spending time on Don Pedro looking for the landlocked king salmon there until the river salmon show up. Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions about trips. I will always reply as soon as possible. Thank you, Captain Doug Mc

13 Days of straight guiding on the California Delta with my clients catchin’fish & making memories that will last a lifetime!