The Patriarch, the Captain, and I braved triple-digit
weather yesterday to try to catch some shad.We heard great reports last week regarding “the shad have landed.”The Captain studied the tides and decided
that we would not have to be on the waters until around 11 AM.And so it was.Every fishing trip is unique.The memorial things about this trip were
pow-wow time, scenery along the Sacramento River through down-town, and
catching shad on a rig made to catch jack smelt.
Between the Patriarch and the Captain, I have access to
almost 150 years of life experience at my disposal.We chatted about relatives back home that I
have never heard of….But, I enjoyed the
conversations regarding their friends catching shad on the Sacramento River the
best!Unfortunately, we only ran into
one of their friends yesterday.He told
us that where we had anchored was the hot spot… but that was last week :-(Darn!No wonder, we were the only boat in the spot whereas the week before,
there were twenty boats on the same spot :-(Double darn!!
Since we missed the boat for shad fishing in the vicinity,
we decided to hop from spot-to-spot to enjoy the scenery along the river.The exciting thing for me was that I used to
work down-town and walked to these locations.Now, I get the awesome view from the river.I attended several functions at the Delta
King Hotel.I learned that the Rio City Café
and Joe’s Crab Shack are next to the Delta King and both have sittings with the
water front view.
As great as the conversations with dad and big bro. and as
great as the river scenery, greater was the fact that we weren’t skunk on this
fishing trip :-)I did a strange thing at one of our fishing
locations.I modified a sabiki rig, used
for catching jack smelt, and lowered it into the water.Within about five minutes, I got a take-down
and landed a nice 18-inch shad hen.That
was to be the only fish landed for the day!
Yes, I know; fishing is not all about catching.But it sure feels good.The added bonus was to spend the day with dad
and big bro. and picked their brains about life.Enjoying the view of the down-town water
front from the river is just fantastic.I guess it’s not too hard to please a farm boy from ‘Nam.
Here are some pictures for your enjoyment:
Nothing to do with this blog. Just an awesome cookie made by my lovely wife!
Our first fishing location was near these birds. Good thing we had our hats on :-)
These were our old productive fishing spots, but not this time.
Bridge over the American River.
The lone friend of the Captain that we encountered. How come they anchored so far from us?
Wahoo!It’s summer
time once again in Cali.This means JU
and the Miracle Squad will be doing a lot of day trips around da mountain.We took one such trip yesterday.It took us two hours to get to our initial
destination to meet up with best friend “da Wiz.”It turns out the Season has not opened and
the gates were closed to all activities accept hiking!?!So a hiking we did do, and then some :-)Realizing that the fishing-door is closed for
this location, we went to a different location or rather locations that we have
never been to before.Hence the “California
Dreaming” begins… to go to places we haven’t been, two new locations.
According to da Wiz, the California Department of Fish &
Wildlife (CDFW) has recently stocked fish in the Silver Fork of the American
River near the town of Kyburz, CA.This
is the town that we passed by on Highway 50, on the way to South Lake Tahoe for
the past two decades.Unfortunately, we
have never stopped by to smell the roses, in this case, the pine trees.A short drive later, we found ourselves at
China Flat Campgrounds.We scoped out
the place, and discovered a beautiful sandy beach with a swimming hole.The swimming hole was deserted.A good tip we gathered from a local is that we
should avoid visiting this location on the weekends.It was around noon, so we picnicked at this
location.While here, Miss Mystic
captured a snake having lunch also.See the video.
After lunch, we decided to scope out another location along
Silver Fork Rd.Wow!What a fantastic view and a potentially great spot for a day trip of
fishing and hiking.We witnessed
people pulling out fish from this location :-)We made a mental note that this location is
not kid-friendly.It would be good for the
more adventurous of hearts.Seeing that
the T-Storm is brewing, we took off at around 1:30 PM.We left just in the nick of time, because we
caught the tail end of hail.We arrived home around 3:30 PM.
What a treasure to be able to enjoy the beauty of Cali so
close by.There are so many more places
that we hope to discover this summer, if God’s willing.Although, I will not post any fish pictures
this time, I will report that we caught one beautiful limit of rainbow trout around
12-inch each :-)
Now enjoy the pictures and video:
Whoa! Is it a big one?
According to da Wiz: "If a snake can catch fish, what's your excuse?"
It’s been our tradition for the past several years to camp
at Sunset Beach State Park in California during the Memorial Day Weekend.We managed to reserve six tent sites that are
next to each other.The weather this
year seems colder than past years.However, the warmth generated from camp activities such as games, camp
fires, fishing, and yes, puppet shows, brought a smile to everyone’s face.
Some of the games included kite flying, ladder toss, and pogo
ball.The wind conditions made flying
kites excellent.The ladder toss game appeared
easy; yet, it challenged the most coordinated and agile people.And the pogo ball kept the kids and kids-at-heart
entertained and warm from all the jumping.
No tent camping can be considered complete without a
campfire.We had one every night.We popped some popcorn, roasted hot dogs,
and made s’mores.Although the heat from
the campfires kept us warm, but it was the warmth of companionship that kept us
gathered together every night.
We did not have much success fishing at the sunken concrete
ship pier this year.There was no Jack
Smelt running like last year.On the
other hand, we did very well with catching sand crabs at Sunset Beach and had a
blast catching fish at the rocks at nearby Moss Landing Beach.It was a bit strenuous running back and forth
on the rocks and we should invest in some creels for next year.We discovered that the metal coat hanger
fishing pole does work (See the video).And also, running on the rocks kept our blood flowing and we had to
remove our coats after a couple of trips.
Our brother "Kayaks with Beavers" gave us a great performance with his traveling
puppet show.He had lots of help with
all the kids at camp.What a fun
activity!I felt warm by all the smiles
and laughter the show generated.
I believed on Saturday, May 23rd, we had more than 70 people in our camp
for the day.With all the people, yet
the food was plentiful!Actually, it was
too much!We should try to tone down on
the food for next year :-)There were some hiccups with so many people
when tent camping, but “love never fails!”And we had a lot of that at camp.Thanks be to God.
