Sacramento Valley

Dan Carter's Guide Service...Feather River
Fish Hookers Sportfishing...Sacramento River
Collins Lake...Oregon House
Jerry's Guide Service...Oroville
Steelie Dan's Guide Service ...Sacramento River

FALL SALMON RUN

September 06

September is here and the salmon will start to make their way up the Sacramento, Feather, and American River systems to their spawning grounds. Remember this about a salmon, a fish that is released in a river when it is a fingerling and heads out to the ocean. Then returns in a few years to the same river to spawn where it was released when it was a fingerling. These salmon have to have some kind of memory or six since!

This brings me to wonder what kind of fall salmon run we are going to have? As you know Shasta Lake that feeds the Sacramento River is over one hundred feet low so how much water can they release? The Feather River, which is fed by Lake Oroville and the American River, which is fed by Folsom Lake, has the same problem. NO WATER! Which makes me wonder how smart a salmon really is? Can they predict our water situation by feeling how much fresh water is running out to the ocean? Will they wait for another year to head up their river to spawn? We will find out this answer in the next couple of months. I can remember back in the last ten years how one year was better than another. I look back now and ask myself why? What made the salmon run better one-year than another? WATER?

We will all find out these answers in the next couple of months.

Good Luck, Alan

The news on the Central Valley rivers salmon front remains pretty grim. This salmon season has been case of major frustration for all and while some guides out there are touting the action as "good on some days OK on others" we will not put lipstick on a pig this ugly. Ugly is just what this season is and what next season will mostly likely be. On the "good" days guides are reporting two or three fish but on most days it's "OK" or ones and nones. It's for no lack of talent or effort it's just that few of the juvenile fish have been able to make it to sea due to the collapse of the Delta food web the past three years and anglers are paying the piper for the deeds (over pumping) of the Bureau of Wrecklaimation. Our sponsor Pete Spaccio has been opting out of the salmon fishery and putting his clients into some great trout action in the Redding area the past two weeks. On Sunday 10-14 Pete had three anglers on board and they landed 37 rainbows averaging 2 to 3 pounds and going up to 5. They are getting all their action on small pieces of roe and a Fish Pill side drifted through the spawning riffles. The trout, lacking the usual 1000s of spawning salmon are hungry very aggressive and doubles and triples are common. The fish are not big but on tight tackle are full of fight and who wouldn't want to hook 10 or 20 fish in a day compared to working for the possibility of one bite. Back on the salmon front Pete says that the top guides are seeing ones and some two fish scores with the best action being in the Woodson Bridge stretch.
Pete will be running mainly trout trips here for another week and he will then head home to the Trinity where the fishing is good and is going to get only better in mid October through November.

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