07-14-2008, 06:54 PM
Having grown up in Delta and fished that area quite extensively, I'll tell you everything I know. A lot of it will be just an echo of what others have said here.
DMAD has white bass, walleye, channel cats, bullheads, crappie, bluegill, largemouth, smallmouth, perch, Northerns, and an occasional trout that washed down from Oak City canyon.
Gunnison Bend has pretty much the same thing fish, plus Sacramento perch. Gunnison Bend seems to have more stable water levels, but neither are real stable due to irrigation demands.
If you're willing to do some exploring, the river anywhere from Oasis/Deseret upstream to Yuba offers much better fishing than either of the reservoirs. Leamington canyon, IMO, is one of the best unknown fisheries in the state. Just downstream from the cement plant, there's a large pool formed on the north side of a railroad trestle/causeway. I've pulled 4lb+ smallmouth out of there along with some extremely large catfish, walleye, crappie, and white bass. I've even caught a couple of decent-sized browns out of that stretch of the river.
There are lots of carp in the whole stretch, but much fewer in the faster moving portions of the river, mostly above DMAD.
Right below DMAD, the washout pool at the base of the dam has made for some amazing fishing. I took 2 of my seminary teachers there many years ago and one took home a 7-lb walleye and the other took home 2 4lb-ers. In the summer, the river gets pretty low, but the closer you get to gunnison bend, the deeper it gets. For 5-6 miles north of gunnison bend, there's some really good catfish, largemouth, and white bass fishing. It takes a little work, but there are some really deep pools there also. Some of the little oxbow ponds off the sides of the river can have some good-sized largemouth. And if they're not biting, get a gun or a bow and shoot the carp from the top of the cliff! I don't know how many hours I wasted in my youth doing that.
At gunnison bend, the best places to fish that i know of are usually right off the dam. It's fairly deep and not as many canal outlets as in DMAD. If you just want to explore, small silver spinners, silver/blue or gold/black rapalas (small ones), and small rat-l-traps worked well for me, but that's been a while. The most successful method there is to get a 2-pole permit, rig one up with a bobber and a worm about 6-8 feet below it. If you catch a carp, cut a chunk out of the side and fish with that instead. With the other rod, chuck small-ish lures mentioned above.
Almost everyone I know from delta says you can't catch fish there on lures because the water's too dirty. Problem is they're comparing it to Fish Lake water where you can see 70-feet down. It's definitely dirtier than that, but there's still a couple of feet of visibility most of the time. That's where I learned that a good selection of lures will out-fish bait almost every time.
By the time I graduated from high-school, I probably knew that area as well or better than anyone else alive. That's what you get from fishing 3-4 times a week for a couple of years. But that's been a while, so maybe it's changed since then. All this was post-83 and post-flood. I fished out along US-6 for white bass. It was fun, except for the mosquitos.
Matt
[signature]
DMAD has white bass, walleye, channel cats, bullheads, crappie, bluegill, largemouth, smallmouth, perch, Northerns, and an occasional trout that washed down from Oak City canyon.
Gunnison Bend has pretty much the same thing fish, plus Sacramento perch. Gunnison Bend seems to have more stable water levels, but neither are real stable due to irrigation demands.
If you're willing to do some exploring, the river anywhere from Oasis/Deseret upstream to Yuba offers much better fishing than either of the reservoirs. Leamington canyon, IMO, is one of the best unknown fisheries in the state. Just downstream from the cement plant, there's a large pool formed on the north side of a railroad trestle/causeway. I've pulled 4lb+ smallmouth out of there along with some extremely large catfish, walleye, crappie, and white bass. I've even caught a couple of decent-sized browns out of that stretch of the river.
There are lots of carp in the whole stretch, but much fewer in the faster moving portions of the river, mostly above DMAD.
Right below DMAD, the washout pool at the base of the dam has made for some amazing fishing. I took 2 of my seminary teachers there many years ago and one took home a 7-lb walleye and the other took home 2 4lb-ers. In the summer, the river gets pretty low, but the closer you get to gunnison bend, the deeper it gets. For 5-6 miles north of gunnison bend, there's some really good catfish, largemouth, and white bass fishing. It takes a little work, but there are some really deep pools there also. Some of the little oxbow ponds off the sides of the river can have some good-sized largemouth. And if they're not biting, get a gun or a bow and shoot the carp from the top of the cliff! I don't know how many hours I wasted in my youth doing that.
At gunnison bend, the best places to fish that i know of are usually right off the dam. It's fairly deep and not as many canal outlets as in DMAD. If you just want to explore, small silver spinners, silver/blue or gold/black rapalas (small ones), and small rat-l-traps worked well for me, but that's been a while. The most successful method there is to get a 2-pole permit, rig one up with a bobber and a worm about 6-8 feet below it. If you catch a carp, cut a chunk out of the side and fish with that instead. With the other rod, chuck small-ish lures mentioned above.
Almost everyone I know from delta says you can't catch fish there on lures because the water's too dirty. Problem is they're comparing it to Fish Lake water where you can see 70-feet down. It's definitely dirtier than that, but there's still a couple of feet of visibility most of the time. That's where I learned that a good selection of lures will out-fish bait almost every time.
By the time I graduated from high-school, I probably knew that area as well or better than anyone else alive. That's what you get from fishing 3-4 times a week for a couple of years. But that's been a while, so maybe it's changed since then. All this was post-83 and post-flood. I fished out along US-6 for white bass. It was fun, except for the mosquitos.
Matt
[signature]