01.01.70

Winter striped bass under way, especially for anglers who fish bait - threadfin shad, anchovies, sardines and live mudsuckers or minnows - and exhibit patience and attentiveness.

"You've got to put in time and respect every bite, even the slightest nibble," Ron Halvorson at Thornton Road Bait said. "Stripers are lethargic eaters when the water is cold. Try fishing with an open bail and let them take it. The fish may run, drop the bait and pick it up again multiple times before actually taking it."

Halvorson, a commercial shad netter, said he's "given up shad fishing" this week because there are so few. For a whole night's effort, he barely comes up with 2 pounds of the coveted baitfish. Striped bass, 3-4 pounders, are spread throughout the system in the upper reaches of the Mokelumne River, Santa Clara Shoals, Old River Flats, mouth of Three Mile Slough and all along the Deep Water Channel from Prisoner's Point to the Turning Basin. Boaters find better luck if they graph fish first, then start to fish.

Source: Stockton Record

by Martin Wilkins

Anyone looking for a good trip to the shooting range needs to have the proper rifle scopes for the job. The basic idea is simple enough, which is to make distant targets appear larger for enhanced accuracy. Making sure one chooses the right scope for the right weapon is trickier, and that’s where the expertise provided by Mueller can be of great assistance.

The part that really does the work is the cam tube. The cam tube grips and moves both the lenses and the reticle into place. By adjusting the cam tube, a shooter maneuvers the lenses, and doing so alters the magnification. Accordingly, the cam tube needs to be able to make the subtlest adjustments possible. It also needs to be tough enough for the field, shockproof and able to handle adverse weather, not to mention recoil.

It takes good light to make a good shot, and this means the light that is made available to the shooter whether it’s sunny or dark out. Since brightness matters so much, it will be important to regard the issue of light management. This broad topic can be broken into its components, such as objective lens size, resolution, field of view, exit pupil, eye relief and of course magnification....

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by k8

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