Adventures of Johnny United: It's Shad, Really :-)

We are blessed with lots of water this year in California. Even now the river levels are pretty high, especially the Sacramento River. Thus, begins my shad story....

We tried for shad on May 5th and discovered that most of our usual boat ramps were not accessible. So we went for striped bass in the delta. We launched out of the Arrowhead Harbor Marina. That day was so windy and the waves were high. We got soaking wet. I got the only bite of the day and I thought it was a big snag! I tried to shake it off until it surfaced and found that it was a large mouth bass. Well, it got off! Darn.

Even my camera wasn't working.

We tried again for shad on May 8th. We launched for the first time at this free boat ramp along the Sacramento River because it was one of the few ramps still open. We never launched there before because it didn't look respectable, then again, desperate times call for desperate measures :-) We got to Freeport and found four boats there, where there are usually a city of boats. At the end of the day, there were four shad landed for all the boats! It was a shad day. I was backing up the trailer to pick up the boat and it took me maybe four or five tries. After me, this old dude showed up, his name is Ong Bay (not kidding, literally translate to Mr. Seven). It took him one try to back up his trailer. He was extremely quick and efficient. To rub to the injury, he caught the two shad and asked if we want it :-) Actually, he was super nice. He just got a call from his friends that the shad were at Discovery and we should follow him. Unfortunately, we ran out of fishing time....

Here we go.

Are we at the right spot?

We came back the same boat ramp yesterday, May 15th. We got to Freeport and we were the only boat there! That is not a good sign when you are fishing for shad. You want to find a city of boats.... To make a long story short, we spent all day fishing (on the water from ~10 AM to 6 PM), to land two shad. The first shad for the 2017 season. It was a shad fishing day :-) This time it only took me one try to back up the trailer. But I was still not as fast as "Ong Bay." It will still take me at least another hundred tries to get to his level :-)