Xtreme-Angling hit the waters of the Sacramento River once again this weekend. We targeted Stripers for the first few hours then transitioned to the Shad.
After launching an hour after 1st light, I ran up river from Verona to hit the waters that had previously been successful. We slow trolled minnows downstream with the current. I was excited to test out some new Fenwick HMX rods which had just recently arrived at the house.
It didn’t take long to get hooked up with a solid fish, only to have the fish roll on the surface and the line break right on the hook eye. I got the whole knot back intact, but the loop going through the hook eye was broke. O well. we started connecting with fish only to find more short fish in the mix then any of the previous days on the water. We ended the morning with 2 keepers, 2 lost keepers and 6 undersized. These undersized fish were from 15′ -17.5″.
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One of our keepers had a CA Fish and Wildlife tag in it.
After running out of the 2 dozen minnows I had picked up earlier that morning, we transitioned over to the mouth of the Feather and Sac Rivers to setup for Shad.
We started off a little slow and had to move the boat over roughly 20 yards from our first location before we started hooking up. Once you get on the correct line, you will started hooking fish on a consistent basis. This line is usually obvious by the straight line of boats anchored vertically with the river.
The water was flowing faster then it had been and was dirtier then last week. This is most likely due to the heavy rain storm that we received earlier in the week. The fish didn’t seem to be bothered by the changes in the water condition at all because they steadily jumped onto your hooks.
We used light action spinning rods with 6lb line rigged with dropper rigs rigged with 1 – 1.5″ curl tail grubs in chartreuse/glitter, glow, champagne, and white. They all caught fish. The boat was anchored in 5.5 – 6 foot of water.
We ended up with 24 Shad to the boat and 19 in the box. The females have definitely started showing up.
We landed some big shad and got off the water at 3:00. I then headed home to spend some time with the family.
I have plenty of openings to take advantage of the mixed bag fishing. Stripers in the morning then shad in the afternoon equates to a fun action packed day.
