Date: 1/23/21

Air temp- 36-56 degrees

Water temp- 49-51

Water Clarity- 3-5 foot

Weather- sunny with a slight breeze

Hello everyone hope the new year is treating you all well. And if you’d like to see how this trip and many others have gone, please hop over onto YouTube and check out Big Ed fishing and RB bass channels and don’t forget to like and subscribe please.

Saturday 1/23, fellow RB bass angler James Everhart and I took a ride out to Lake Oroville just to see how the lake is doing and just have a nice relaxing day on the water.

The day started off with us getting on the water around 8am after we meet up at North valley tackle in Oroville. We made our first run up the middle fork of the feather straight to the wood. Boy oh boy did it look like we would find some fish but that was not the case for us. James picked up a phenix maxim to toss his frenzy nail and a green pumpkin x zone true center stick. He instantly started fishing up tight to the bank in the wood. I picked up a Phenix M1 7’4 ML casting rod that had my Xzone swammer on a Dobyns 1/4 ounce head. I decided to fish a little deeper in the trees off shore. After spending about an hour picking the cove apart we decided this was not working and the fish just weren’t in the wood yet. So we shot over to a steep rock wall in the shade almost instantly we had a fish on a drop shot. That was when we decided to switch up tactics. I started to drag the swammer on the bottom but still wasn’t getting bit as I was watching James get bit on the drop shot that he was ever so slowly dragging on the bottom.

So at this point we knew the fish weren’t in the wood they were on rock and rubble so using the humminbird solix we got on the chart and started finding spots and marking where we thought fish would be. Low and behold we had a pattern. Rock with water depth in that 10-15 foot range right off the bank but with quick access to 35+ feet of water. Our bait of choice was either a X Zone swammer 3.5 or  keitech 3.3 in any Shad color. As far as head choice went anything 1/4 ounce or less to help stay on bottom but light enough to keep your bait from getting hung up on the rocks as easily. When it came to the speed of the retrieve that is where you had to keep that bait on the bottom and as slow as possible.

We finished the day with probably 20 fish caught and almost 9 pound for our best 5 fish. And the best of those 5 fish came right up on the bank. It seemed the deeper you are the smaller the fish got. As well as if you found fish that were busting bait you would not catch those fish. Hope this helps all of you guys and gals.

Till next time tight  lines.