We started planning this trip last week. There are two main factors to consider when fishing the Napa River, tides and weather. Ideally, you want to fish the incoming tide, where freshly oxygenated water is coming into the system bringing some bait fish along with it. As far as the weather, I look at wind speed as a primary factor. If the forecasted wind speeds are over 15 mph, I would probably consider rescheduling the trip.
But not always. During incoming tide, stripers like to position themselves on the shelves near inlets or even in deeper waters in sloughs and the main river channel. They stage themselves in ready positions to ambush the bait flowing in on the tide. As far as tackle for trolling, we found that Rattle Traps work the best for us. The idea of a rattle trap is a lipless crankbait of various weights and sizes that dive 5ftft when trolling behind the boat.
These crankbaits are designed to run nose down, as such, they do a good job running over obstacles in shallow spots - perfect for trolling in sloughs. John and I launched at Cuttings Warf and started trolling the main river at around am. The tide was just starting to come in so we took our time trolling the main river before running into the sloughs. The sloughs are shallow during low tide and I wanted to get a bit more water into the system before taking my North River boat into the sloughs.
The plan for the day was to troll the main, then start working the sloughs, anchoring up and casting near inlet mouths that looked promising. We did just that. Our first hookup came within minutes of entering the Napa slough. We spent the next couple of hours trolling the slough and anchoring in spots that looked promising.
Our next hookup came on the way out of the Napa slough, while we were almost at the mouth to the main. All fish was released to fight another day. We ended up running to the 37 bridge and fished another slough there for an hour.
