Shad Fishing on the Lower Sacramento River - June 3-4
Looking ahead to our mid June drive up to British Columbia I chose to take a short drive up to the Lower Sacramento River, Princeton area, to do some shad fishing with former guest speaker Phil Fischer rather than drive all the way to Lake Davis. The day after Chip O'Brien gave his illuminating talk on Keswick Reservoir I headed up to Rd. 48 on the Lower Sac. I was on the river by 6:30pm experiencing a slow bite. Anglers were lined up about 10 yards apart chatting actively with their neighbors about everything from fly patterns to the salmon bite off of the Santa Cruz coast. When I heard our town mentioned I asked the gents where they were from and received a "we are all from Santa Cruz" reply. There were at least 15 men from town who were camping in RVs along the river, none that I recognized. All were fly fishing though. One guy mentioned that he was the head butcher at my local Albertson's. As I have never even seen a butcher behind the counter at Albertsons, it made sense that I didn't recognize him. Just as the sun went down the mosquitos came out with a vengeance. Even a liberal application of repellant couldn't keep the little buggers from dive bombing my face. Gave up after donating a pint or two of blood to the nasty gnats. Fished all day Saturday with about 10 fish to hand and little or no problems with the bugs. Water on the river was still a bit fast. Heard that Rattlesnake Island was still partly submerged. The shad should be thick as this article goes to print. - Tim Loomis
Shad Fishing on the Lower Sacramento River - June 11
Tony and I went fishing yesterday on the lower Sac looking to catch a few shad, I caught one and that was it. So, shad fishing this year wasn't too good, the last chance might be to catch them below the diversion Dam in Red Bluff. The waters up here are still pretty high. We also went to Dunsmuir and checked out the water; it's still still pretty high up there. It will probably be real good in August. - Linda Holdren
June 13th - Christmas Island
Bonefishing on Christmas Island is great! There is only a 17 passenger plane going there from Honolulu once per week, so the total fishermen won't exceed that in a place that can easily support more. Members Sam Bishop and Jarl Saal, plus two prospective members of our club, Charles Canfield and Dave McClure went over Memorial Day week, and, as the photo shows, it definitely was worth it! - Sam Bishop