The steelhead fishing on the Yuba river has been just great. I have been fishing about 2 days a week out of our small jet boat, landing anywhere from 12 to 25 fish a day. Most the fish are between 14&21in and really hard fighters.  I have been using all egg pattern. I’am going to slow down up there from here on out, only doing one day a week,  Duck season has been going for a few weeks now, the club I work for did really good the first week.  Now we are just getting a few specks out of one blind.  The too marsh’s I run are still shooting Limits of mostly mallards, 3 days a week. My guide blind is still not fully flooded as of today. From the reports I have been getting only a few blinds around sutter are shooting a few ducks as they were the first in the area to get water. I shot in the sink last Friday and in one word it was (bad).

  OK after two weeks of really kind of poor fishing in the Feather River we now have fish.  I went to the ocean on Wednesday on a cod and halibut boat, and seen the salmon fleet.  There were two big schools of fish just off the coast, and about 4 miles up.  The past two days fishing in Chico have been absolutely awesome,  yesterday we landed 8 out of 12 by noon. Today I had three guys and boated 6 of 8 by 1clock.  These salmon are dime bright bullets and fight like crazy.  From what I seen in two days most fish have been between 6 and 12 lbs. You can get up to the hour up dates by checking us out on facebook for river guide service or me Aaron Zanocco. I have posted pictures from the past week on my page. I’am just now starting to book some trips for this late August and September salmon run,

  It’s been 3 long years but finally the long a waited salmon season opener has happened.  In short it was the very worst I have ever seen in my 15 years of fishing on opening day.  Me and my crew fished Redbluff to coyote creek, Out of the 40 boats we fished around I only saw maybe 3 fish caught.  On July 16th spoke with at least a dozen different guide boats up and down both the sac and feather rivers, and out of maybe 250 boats who went out on opening day I only heard of about 45 salmon being caught.  From what I tell most of the fish in the feather river shot up to the after bay last week when DWR dropped the flow from 8000cfs to 2500cfs.  In sac river no one really has good answers to why there are no fish, one good theory is due to are big spring and hi flows in all the tributaries most all of the spring salmon shot up those creeks. We fished hard on opening day, in all the of the five main spots in redbluff, and never had a bite or saw one fish roll. 

  There some good news from all this, I have been getting all kinds of good reports coming from the salt. I have herd of several big schools of salmon above and below San Francisco. These fish are heading are way. Hopefully we should start seeing salmon here in the rivers by mid August. I’am looking forward to a big September. I’am going to booking trips as soon I start seeing some jump around.

 Striper fishing has been all most as good as the 2006 season, averaging about 15-25 fish per day. I have had a few off days on the sac only cause of the water going up and down do to snow melt.  Starting this week it looks like the weather is going to be sunny and warm for the next 10 days.  Once we have 2 days on the sac with stable conditions it’s going to be incredible fishing.  The fishing on the feather has still been good, just a lot of small fish.  I changed over to the feather river yesterday do to the sac getting muddy. We landed 15 keeper fish and maybe 10 shakers, by noon.  I have not boated any real big hens yet, last week we let go about 8/10 hens ranging from 8 to 15 lbs.  I have been getting a lot of report’s that people are starting to get big hens over 20lbs the past few days. Starting Monday I will return to the feather river, and work my down from yuba city.  I still have about 12 days open in May, give us a call striper fishing next month is going to be wide open.

The rains have finely slowed down and the warm weather has everyone getting out there boats.  With the high flows in sacramento river everyone is fishing the feather river, and for good reason.  The past few days have been a wide open bite.  Yesterday me and coupleof guys boated 25 fish, today we boated at least 60 fish.  Most of the stripers this time of year are fairly small from 17in to 26in typical schooly males. As I most always use, we did most of our damage on live bait and 1oz blue and white gibs minnow.  These fish will be in this system till they drop the water, which by the way the lakes are filled wont be for sometime.  Iam guessing that by the middle of next week the water on the sacramento will be just rite.  I have lots of days still open for this striper season it’s sure to good one don’t miss this year, give me call.

Just got this great compliment from a client who has fished with us for many years. Byron was with us on the day we took a local journalist fishing. (You can read the article at http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/years-98323-three-don.html )

> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:46:07 -0700
> To: riverguideservice

> Subject: Fishing
> From: byron
>
> Jim,
> Thank you once again for a wonderful fishing experience! Your sincere love of our fishery humbles me! You are truely a proffesional of your craft and have my deepest respect as a guide and a friend. I will return to fish with you every opportunity we have. Thank you for your service as an ambassador to salmon fishing in California. Nobody holds a higher rank in my opinion to your class, style, and love of the sport. You are truly blessed by the fishing Gods.
>
> Sincerely & Respectfully
>
> The Norwegian Diesel
> Byron

   For first time in three years we have been able to salmon fish the feather river, in a word its been weak.  After the opening week end at yuba city which saw quite a few fish being caught it really got slow.  I only took trips twice a week, some days we never even had a bite, and other days we would land three fish.  There were a few boats that would get up in the middle of the night to claim one of three good slots were the fish were coming thru, and on average would land two fish a day.  As of August 20 the water temp in the upper feather had finely dropped from 70 degrees to 63 degrees which brought some of fish that have been hanging out in the Orville afterbay down in to the lower river were it is legal to fish.  Before the temp change the fish were running up river fast, to get in the oxygenated and cooler water of the outlet.  I fished the upper feather on Sunday August 22 by myself and landed two salmon in about 30 minutes.  I took a couple of guys out yesterday Aug 24 and landed 3 fish in the upper river, which is for this year about as good as it gets. 

  Not all is lost, after one of wettest springs in California the Yuba river has had good high flows all summer, combined with the feathers high flow of water a lot of salmon have made it to the hatchery.  I have herd reports of thousands of fish bumping there noses on the damn at Orville.  So there should be a good harvest of eggs for spawning this fall. 

   I’am looking forward to a decent opener on the sac river this fall.  The sac opens in the upper section on Oct 9 and runs Thu Dec 12.  I’am booking the first 3 weeks of the season.  After that its duck season and I will only be fishing on a limited basis.  After seeing all the fish that made it in the feather river Iam thinking the sac should be pretty good.  The first 3 weeks in October all ways was very good fishing. 

As of today August 25 I have 10 day open for the sac river salmon run.  Give me a call if your interested.

Thanks Aaron Zanocco.

Well I haven’t taken to many days off this duck season; I have only missed 8 days all year.  In one word it’s been slow. Over the past 2 weeks the hunting has greatly improved: at the big duck club that I manage, the past 6 shoot days have finally produced some OK numbers, averaging 4 birds per gun. I hunted some of my friends’ blinds in the Robbins area last week and had some really good shoots, only shooting mallards and sprig for two days. We didn’t get full limits but could have if we shot small ducks. After talking with 12 different blinds and 2 refuges I found out that on Saturday the 12th, the Sacramento Valley, from Road 32 (just below Chico) to Highway 113, shot like wildfire; almost everybody I talked with shot limits with a good number being mallards. My guide blind was not hunted on that Saturday, but shot 17 on Sunday with 5 mallards.  What happened this past week was, we have had a lot of birds in the valley for the past 2 or 3 weeks.  But with clear and cold weather, the ducks have been on a routine and staying out of harm’s way. Well, Saturday the weather pattern changed, and the fog rolled in and messed up all the birds in the valley. Mix that with a little wind on Sunday and you have perfect hunt conditions.

Truly an unbelievable opening day of the late fall salmon season. We set out with pretty low expectations with all the low salmon numbers at the hatcheries this year.  But by 9:45am we had full boat limits of nice big king salmon.  There were 6 of us in the boat today, and with a one fish limit it was like the good old days, ( a hand full of years ago ) drop in and get one.  Fish ranged from 12-34 lbs and all but one was dime bright.  We were on the phone all moring with other boat’s getting report’s up and down the river that had all got fish. I look for this kind of fishing to last for some time considering the span of river that seem to loaded with fish.

It’s been a very busy 25 days.  Duck season has been truly unbelievable so far in Dingville, where I have been working as their hunting guide.  Dingville had their best opening weekend in 15 years; we killed over 160 ducks, of which 30 were mallards. There are a whole bunch of birds in the North Valley.  This is in part because we had a better wet spring and all the new wetland projects throughout the Valley raised a lot of local mallards and teal.

Water goes on at my blind next to Dingville this week and it should be shooting good by Thanksgiving week. I have lots of dates still open in December.

On the fishing front, I ran a few steel head trips up the Yuba River with good results; landing between 2 and 4 real steel head and about 12-15 trout per trip. On October 29, I fished the upper Sacramento from Los Molinos to Salt Creek; there are very few salmon beds to target for steel head, but there are a few and we found them.  We landed 7 real nice steel head between 1and 3 pounds, with one being a triple hook-up. About 10-15 trout mixed in made for a great day of fishing.