Air temp: 40-60 Degrees
Weather: Mostly Cloudy
Water temp: 65-66 degrees
Water Clarity: 6ft
Winds 3-8mph
Lake level: Down about 70ft from full
Fished the Oroville Future Pro event with RBBass angler James Everhart and launched from Bidwell for the event. We Headed up the South Fork at blast off and had no pre-fish time so ran blind. We began targeting some coves with standing timber in hopes of finding some Largemouth Bass to get an edge on the competition. After about an hour James hooked up with about a 2lb Largemouth in the cove on a jig and it threw the jig with a graceful jump. We had no other action in the cove but the Salmon were everywhere in there and followed some of the baits we were chucking. We decided to head further up the river and focused on steep Rocky banks around sand and immediately started catching better fish. Only 1 or 2 off of each spot then the bite in each spot died. We decided that because this pattern was working we followed this pattern for the rest of the tournament up until the last hour. I decided to stop on a deep bluff wall and chucked my Rainbow Trout colored S-waver and got crushed! Landed the little 1.5lb spot and it didn’t help our bag which was just under 10lbs. Looking for that big bite we chucked Hudds around and I got hammered and missed. James threw the same Hudd and got hammered and missed also. We were pretty crushed thinking what we had just missed so we continued to chuck the baits on the wall and kept going back and forth. Finally, I got crushed on the Hudd and it was on! My Denali Rods Swimbait rod was doubled over with aggressive head shakes and James went for the net. Excited we may have the winning fish on, it finally broke surface and was in the net! Our hearts dropped when we saw it was a Big Squawfish and with 20 minutes left to fish we put our heads down and grinded on before running back to weigh-in.
We ended the tournament in 8th place with 9.74lbs and for Oroville that isn’t too bad. We just couldn’t find that correct kicker fish to step up our bag lol.
Heading to Oroville we did the best on Jigs and Hula grubs, Canopy Grenades Darts with 4-6” roboworms and some are eager to eat River2sea S-wavers. There is a plentiful amount of Salmon up the south river arm. We didn’t get any topwater activity but that should change soon. Looked like the Pond smelt may have just spawned so there is no shortage of ½” fry up there. If your heading out good luck out there!