Shad Times on the ol’ River
May 28, 2008
Here’s a pic of trusty sidekick and deckhand, Reilly, with a jumbo roe shad from the Feather River.
We did a guide trip upriver Tuesday and, on the way home, decided at the last second to drop the boat in below Shanghai Falls and do a little fun fishing. After approximately 1,472 shad in about an hour and a half, Reilly hooked this big hen…his biggest to date. Also a first for me was having to run back to the boat..at his urging…to grab the net and BogaGrip. Can’t say I’ve ever Boga’d a shad before…
After the 200-yard trek across the wet, slippery as snot clay, through the minefield of broken glass and back, the hen weighed in at 6 pounds, which is about as big as they get around here (the state record is slightly more than a pound heavier).
We’d been up since 4 a.m. and were getting a little punchy from being on the boat all day, so we called it quits. The fish were still biting at a rate of every cast, but we were outta energy so we pulled the plug and headed south.
The falls at Shanghai Bend are very cool to see — especially when you consider they’re located on an otherwise flat valley floor. I can only manage a trip there about once a year, however, because I get so bummed out to see how trashed the place gets. There’s garbage everywhere — bottles, cans, line, a million shad jig packages and everything else you can imagine.
Come on, people…how hard is it to pack your trash out? I just don’t get it…
The sad part is if you asked most of the festering white trash who infest that place they’d probably tell you it’s one of their favorite places on earth.
Nothing like trash to completely trash a place.
And that’s reason No. 475 why I don’t go to the Feather anymore.