12Lb Striper caught on Yo-Zuri shallow runner

We went fishing last Sunday on the Delta. Check out the Video of a 12.5 lb striper that we caught. We had a better then average trip, and I have a feeling if we went again we would do even better. We tried here and there to catch some Black Bass, but they weren’t biting. My main goal was to catch some striper and we did just that.

I kept reading about guys catching stripers trolling using shallow running rebels at 5mph so this is what we tried, and it worked once we found the fish. What I also learned is that on outgoing tide the stripers were hanging out near the down current side of a large sand bar. I trolled in as shallow an area as possible without going shallower then 6 feet. Seems most of the fish caught were in the 6 to 10 foot depth range.

We caught a 5# and 12.5# striper and several shakers and at least one missed strike. I had a 17 inch striper practically rip the rod right out of my hand as I was letting out the line. I thought for sure he would be a keeper, but he was just shy of 18 inches. The striper's seemed to be well fed. We kept the 5# and had fish tacos last night and released the 12.5 pounder which I presume to be a female.

As a result of this trip I have identified two new places that will hold fish on outgoing tide. We fished around Decker Island and caught our 1^st keeper just east of the main channel. After that nothing on the Sacramento, so I headed to one of my favorite spots on the San Joaquin near the sandbar up stream from the Antioch Bridge. We saw others fishing up north about a mile and a half, but didn’t try although I heard there was a decent run there recently.

All fish accept one small shaker came on one rod that had a Yo-Zuri on it. I tried to purchase a couple more prior to the trip, but I couldn’t find any in Tracy. I will have to make a trip to Manteca’s Fisherman’s Warehouse most likely prior to my next trip. I am sure if we had a couple more we would have had better luck. The Yo-Zuri has a much more pronounced rattle and ran shallower then the other two shallow running broken back rebels that we had. I used a small 2.5” grub with curly tail, white with sparkles on all rebels. I have heard of others using longer trailers around 6”, but based on their posts they had a lot of missed strikes.