American River Shad 5/21

Went out today to chase some more silver bullets on the AR. Arrived at my honey hole at Rossmoor at 0930 to see how the morning bite was. Arrived to see a few friends of friends I knew in the honey hole. Cool to have some company to fish with. They were just tieing their gear on right as I showed up so we all started the same time. Started off pretty slow but I managed to hook into a decent female 20 mins in.

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Couple cast later I got one small enough for bait so I rigged him up and sent him back out to hopefully bring me something bigger.

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While I did that the guys around me Brian and Kyle start hooking up.

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Brian with his first of the day.

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Kyle hooked up

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Kyle's fish.

After about a 45 min soak with my live shad I gave that up and switched back over to fishing for shad to get some bendo going.

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Got this other nice sized female.

I decided to take a lunch break around 1200. Went to go hang out with the girl friend a bit and get some food for a while. Back on the water around 1500. Walked down with my friend Adam and right away Adam is hooking up.

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I noticed I'm dragging bottom a lot more now then I was in the morning. Seemed like the flows went down on me or something, but it was messing with my drift and I had a hard time sitting in the right slot to get hooked up. Wasn't long before Adam got a good bait sized fish and he let me have that one for bait so out he went. Determination is gonna pay off for me sooner or later. Adam continued to slay while I was soaking my shad.

Around 1700 the party of my cousins arrived.

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It got crowded quick. Too crowded for Adam so he took off to fish another day. Luckily all real friendly guys and familiar people I've fished with here in years past. By 1800 I counted over 15 people fishing the stretch of water though, word is out.

Bite was fairly consistent throughout the evening and wasn't long before a stringer was getting full.

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Some bendo here.

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and a few shad there.

Something new for me. While I was fishing my live shad there was a moment where my line went dead slack, I didn't feel any weight on it at all. I got really excited thinking a Striper picked my shad up and was just going up river with it. I let it go for a while just picking up my slack as it came up. After a bit though I heard someone down river yell I got someones line. I looked and my shad that has a hook in his face and his back hit his jig and he landed my fish. Absolutely could not believe that only did this fish continue to feed while it had a hook through him, but he still went and hit another fisherman's jig. Absolutely incredible, I couldn't believe it.

After an hour or so of that I dropped trying to Stripers and went for shad, plus with so many people there were a lot of lines in the water and it was getting to close having too many issues with tangling up with other fisherman. The bite stayed consistent throughout the evening. Never really was any better at this time or that time. Just when a school came though people caught fish. I stayed until 2030 and ended my total day with landing about 12 shad or so with losing half that and missing who knows how many. Pack up my crap and a bit of some other people's and took off for home.

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Sorry for the blurry picture but if you can't tell its a load of plastic bottles and some other random garbage. Good day out on the water. I haven't seen any Striper activity in the evening at all which is weird. Hopefully they'll show up soon or I'll have to look for some greener pastures. Till then Shad still pull hard!

Till Next Time Guys
Mark