GENERAL CONDITIONS

The weather this week here at Del Valle has been beautiful. It has been chilly early in the mornings with temperatures rising into the low 90s by mid day. The hot bite this week has been catfish with many anglers hooking up. Water temperature is slowly dropping week by week, the surface temperature this week is 77 degrees.

Our good friend Doc. Al Hurwitz came out this week with a couple of his friends to troll for some smallmouth and here is his report.

‘John Foster of Saratoga, Al Hurwitz of Saratoga, and Abbey Lev of Sunnyvale all trolled the lake on 8/17/17, again searching for smallmouth bass. We trolled both 1/4 oz. Panther Martin and 1/4 oz. Rooster Tail Spinners and caught 17 smallmouths and one nice bluegill. The larger smallies weighed up to 1.5- 2 lbs. For some unknown reason, the bigger fish were almost all caught on the Rooster Tails. It's possible that the Rooster Tails "matched the hatch" more closely and that the larger rotating blades set up more under water vibration. Shad and crawfish scent applied to the lures seemed to help. The fish were caught on both sides of the lake in the area of Swallow Bay. They were located 15 feet below the surface in a 25 foot water column. About 7-8 fish did not stay pinned, including 2-3 big ones which were probably in the 2-3 lb. range. Surface water temperature was 75-77 degrees on a beautiful summer day. A terrific day of fishing!’

CATFISH

Catfish have been the best bet this week with many anglers pulling some decent sized cats out of the lake especially with our last catfish plant on 8/15/17 of 750 LBS. Average size this week has been about 5 LBS with the biggest being 11 LBS. Most anglers are using either anchovies, mackerel or night crawlers. Fish around fallen trees, tule patches and weed beds, for catfish the more cover in the water the better.

STRIPED BASS

Stripers have been on fire still especially early mornings up until about 11 o'clock. I've had many anglers come back saying they caught there limits on early mornings fish boils. If you do happen to pull up on a boil we recommend using small top water lures, or curly tail swimjigs. Stripers are still slamming on bait, either anchovies, chicken liver or cut sardines. Best places to fish are in the lower narrows and out towards the dam.