Things have really been happening this past couple of weeks or so and some for the good and some not.

For some of the bait(minnow) guys things were red hot a week ago and then it died as the smolt came in to the river. The stripers then gorged on the smolt and didn't care about much else. At the same time the water on the SAC has dropped several feet and this too turns the bite off.

When things like this happen you start looking at other options, that being the Feather. Two weeks ago at Starbend it too was a red hot minnow bite. Some guys were reporting 20-30 fish days. When everyone in town is pounding an area like this I go the opposite direction. Shanghai Bend provided several days of fun in the last few weeks and now the water has come up very noticeably and this has brought in a lot of new fish including shad. The water at the falls was almost to the top this morning and most fish can easily move upstream over this barrier. Maybe we'll have some shad in the Yuba this year if the water continues to stay like it is.

This morning my friend Jim May and I hit the Feather again before before going to work. We managed five in just a couple of hours at daybreak, but that little breeze the weather-man was talking about turned to full force and was pushing the boat upstream. So, time to quite and back home by 9:00AM.



Both rivers seem to have stabilized now and there are fish throughout both rivers. Hopefully the flows will stay like they are, the shad will keep coming, and the striper bite will continue to get better.