Sacramento River Striped Bass Fishing Report. April 21, 2023
- Tim
- Apr 24, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 25, 2023
Our Day started at 5:30 am at the Tisdale boat ramp. The Tisdale boat ramp is located approximately 6 miles south east of the town of Grimes in Sutter county California. This is a good launching facility. Plenty of parking easy ramp in and out for launching boats or kayaks.
We had hired a guide for the day by the name of Rob Reimers, the owner of Rustic Robs guide service. Rob has been fishing these waters for over 15 years as a professional guide. I discovered Rob on the weekly fishing report that is run Saturday mornings on radio station KFBK in Sacramento and can also be found on apple podcast and IHeart radio. The show is called the outdoor show with Bob Simms. Bob Sims is the Outdoors reporter that sponsors the fishing and hunting an outdoors report. Rob has been on his show for quite some time, and I've been listening to him weekly and love his reports and just the sound of the way takes care of his clients. Also, Rob has amazing results that I've been hearing over the years. So decided to book a trip. I heard on the Outdoors show from Rob that the stripers are starting to come in to spawn.
The Sacramento River flows directly into San Francisco Bay, which is an opening to the Pacific Ocean.
This gives us nice runs of fish that come and spawn salmon, steelhead, striped bass and sturgeon. Rob does all these trips. He has a boat I do not know the official length but I am guessing it's got to be at least 26 feet. It has six seats for clients. This boat is the nicest fishing boat I have ever been on. Rob’s boat is also equipped with a top that he puts up in the winter and also has a heater in the Boat. Our fishing day was topless. We had no top on the boat. Temperatures were chilly at the start but once the sun came up, things warmed up quite nicely.
We launch the boat somewhere between 530 and 6 AM. We then proceeded to the first fishing spot, guessing about a mile down stream. There we put out the anchor and had five rods out, bait setup it up with pile worms as the Sacramento River is still quite cloudy from all the rain that we've had lately. I think before we got the fifth rod out into the water one rod of the rods went off and was picked upstarted reeling in and felt like a truck was driving away fastened to the fishing line. Shortly after it broke off our guess was we had hooked into a sturgeon. Shortly after that maybe five minutes more I got my first striper 24 incher. The size limit in the Sacramento River for striped bass is 18 inch minimum size. So this was no monster by any means but a nice eating fish. We kept it continued fishing with multiple rods going off and by 7:30 AM. We had our limits.
The entire day of fishing estimated 30+ fish most were striped bass two catfish two sucker fish. Water temperature was 59°. Water condition cloudy approximately 2 feet visibility. This day of fishing was April 21, 2023 and there was a striped bass derby the next day and listening to Rob's report on the Outdoors report on KFBK he had said that the water come up to 61°. It's warming up quickly. 63° is usually the temperature that triggers the striped bass to go into spawning mode. I think all the fish we caught on this day were males. Did not notice any hens, which most likely will be coming up shortly because the water temperature is getting close to premium for spawning
. A few other notes if traveling to the Tisdale boat ramp or any of the boat ramps on the Sacramento river in Sutter County, five dollar parking fee cash only. I will list Rob's contact information below and hope to see you soon with another report later this week.
Links: Rustic Robs Guide Service- www.rusticrob.com
rusticrob75@yahoo.com 530-632-0051
YouTube channel Rustic Rob's Guide Service
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