If your heading to Lake oroville this weekend, be sure to bring the flukes & top water plugs. Look for any bush, lay down, or tree in the water towards the bank. Early morning is best for large mouth in these spots. As soon as the sun hits the water, the large mouth are looking for food up high in the water collum and close to shore. Lone trees or bushes are the key. The fish are ready to spawn, and are on the serch for good bedding grounds. Every fish caught was full of pond smelt & crawdads ( some even spit up a small blue gill or two!)
How to: Fish the flukes in one of two ways, first, use only the wieght of the hook and "dead stick" it with short (3" to 4") twiches with long (4 to 6 sec.)pauses in between. The best colors to use, being either silver/lt. grey or lt. grey/blue in either the 3" or 4" sizes. Once the sun is up, start to change over to a 1/8 or smaller dart head with either a robo worm or tube. In the robo, try one of three colors 1. war mouth has still been catching good fish, along with aarons magic and people choice. In the tubes, I perfer the Yum greens & lt. browns. Others that have worked are gitiz motor oil/black flake, water mellon/red flake and water mellon/white tails. Fish go down to 20\' to 30\' in mid-day off main pts. bite is still on the lite side until the temp. gets up to at least the mid sixties. They are still hitting it on the fall, so watch your line for movement or small twiches, reel set your bites and hang on. The fight is in these "footballs" and there's a good chance of a hawg being on the other end. You might also want to get those swim baits out and dust them off.
tight lines & full live wells
B.D.Gibson