Salmon Fishing Report

 Here's the fishing report I posted to my Club's Website:

Wednesday Rio Vista Salmon
 We finally ditched California City and went the other way for a change. It worked!

We launched the F/V SturgeUrge at Vieira's Resort at 10AM and trolled down to the Sacramento main stem. I counted 45 boats at 10:30, and that didn't count those out of sight above Hidden Harbor. We'd seen one salmon boated on the Old Sacramento from the levee road before getting to Vieira's.

We turned downstream above Hidden Harbor and were trolling down the channel when my rod with the double chartreuse Silvertron went off. A coupled of head shakes, a couple of runs from boatside and a nice buck is in the net.

Woops, upon further investigation it was a Coho and back it went. The three athletic jumps should have clued me in...I'd estimate it at 7-8lbs


Well, at least we knew we were at the right place, at the right time, pulling the right hardware at the right speed!

On the next lap, in the same spot (off Ryer Island midway between the Old Sac and Steamboat Slough) My Silvertron did it's magic again, but it didn't stay on more than 30 seconds...I may have horsed it a little in the heat of the moment...

We made another lap and this time it's SturgeUrge's rod that goes off and his fish is head shaking harder, running harder and finally Sturge swims it into the net. Sturge was pulling a #5 silver Mepps.

This time it's the right kind, and it was 17-18lbs! It's still almost three hours to the top of the tide!

That was it for us, but we did see nets flying until 2PM, all in that same sweet spot, though closer to the eastern shore than we were running. I wouldn't say it was a hot bite, but after three fruitless trips to California City, it seemed like more than a scratch bite. All in all, we saw a solid half dozen fish boated.

I'm sure many were taken before we arrived on our Banker's Hours...

We're going back Friday. SturgeUrge's 18 pounder had the hooking jaw, and wasn't bright chrome, but the fillets are beautiful...krill-fed red. Yummy!

He he...
Giants looked good tonight beating the AZ Diamondbacks 6-0 behind another great start from Matt Cain Cain pitched 7 innings, gave up 4 hit, zero runs, walked one and struck out 6. Matt's now 16-5

Gone Fishing

SturgeUrge and I continue our quest for king salmon today. It's autumn and the salmon are making their way upriver. So we will fish the Sacramento River in the Delta near Isleton today.

Even this far inland, it's a tidal fishery and the tides are big all week. We'll be fishing the top of the afternoon tide...two hours or so before the top of the tide and a couple hours after.

The forecast looks good, highs in the upper 80s and afternoon winds up to 11mph.

C'mon fish!

New Camera Update:
It's all up to the Brown Trucks now. I called Adorama Camera Monday, and they sent me everything I needed to return the Samsung WB750 for a full refund. I bought it via Amazon Marketplace, and Adorama even pays for the return shipping.

I will order another one as soon as my card is refunded for this one. What are the odds that I'd get another one with a spot on the lens? Aside from the spot on the sensor, this little camera made awesome photos and the 1080p HD video it makes are beautiful!

Race 232 "September Fury"

Good news, the price has dropped from $161 to $139. The difference will pay for a Pelican Box to protect the replacement snapper!

Reno Air Race News:
Air & Space Smithsonian has a nice story on this year's races and the returning fans.

Space Shuttle Endeavour:
I'm seeing photos all over the internet of the Shuttle's final ferry flight over state capitols, the USS Iowa, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Los Angeles' Hollywood Sign.

As a taxpayer, it irks me that they've retired the shuttle program halfway through it's design lifetime, killing thousands of high paying jobs in America during the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and outsourcing those jobs to Russia. It blows.

More Loose Ends

Embedding the Wind Tunnel Videos has been real cranky this morning, so I split today's screed in half...I'm too tired to fight it this morning (I got up at 0430 to watch the Singapore Grand Prix, where the Formula One cars raced under the lights. It's a spectacular race venue!



Alex Zanardi Newz:
Wind Tunnel has been keeping an eye on ex-IndyCar Champion Alex Zanardi who won two Paralympic Gold Medals in the 2012 London Paralympic Games, and my be headed to the Indianapolis 500 next May. Enjoy Zanardi's Wind Tunnel interview:

Loose Ends

I'm amazed at how tired I am from my week at the Air Races. I've been slacking a little, but it's for a good cause...

Saturday night the San Francisco Giants clinched the National League West title with ten games still to play in the Regular Season. They have been on a roll as they say. Last night's win was their sixth in a row. AT&T Park sold out for the 150-somethingth time in a row. Three and a half million fans have been to the park this season.

Like I've said before, the Giants are playing a very enjoyable version of Major League Baseball this season. The starting pitchers have escaped whatever demons were giving them pause, and pitching like the World Beaters they were in 2010 when they did beat the World to become World Series Champs.

Reno Air Races:
The Unlimited Breitling Gold Race winner, Steven Hinton was interviewed after the show by SpeedTV's Dave Despain for his weekly racing wrap-up/bench racing show, Wind Tunnel:

 

Cookin' with TruckeeDave:
I'm tired, but I still tried a couple of new recipes Saturday:
From the Coconut & Lime Blog: Dill Broccoli Slaw I've been looking for the broccoli slaw in the grocery stores in the Inland Valley for a month. When I got back up to Truckee, my neighborhood Safeway store had it in stock. It's good stuff, crispy, tangy and a nice change from green salads.

My Safeway also had a great sale on fresh raspberries, buy one, get two free! I had planned to make a raspsberry tort, but Saturday I defrosted the garage refrigerator and found a pair of frozen deep dish pie shells, so Deep Dish Raspberry Pie it was!

This was the third pie in a row after making my Lumpy Peach Cobbler most weeks this summer. The pies have been turning out "a little sloppy" to put a kind spin on it...

Who knew there was so much juice in the little rascals? When I went into the kitchen this morning for some coffee, there was a note on the pie:

Sister K...whatta Kidder! I like "Head Wound Pie"

Space Shuttle Fly-By:
I watched NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour Friday morning as it flew around San Francisco Bay on it's way to it's Retirement Home in Los Angeles. I can't bring myself to opine on this today. I'll weigh in next week.

Shuttle Update

NASA TV and SpaceflightNow have LIVE video of the Endeavour and the 747 carrier aircraft taxiing towards the runway at Edwards AFB

My Avation Week

OK...I'm up...

After a week in the high desert celebrating aviation's past by watching aged warbirds push the envelope at the Reno Air Races, today I witness personally the future of American Manned Spaceflight retire with a "Victory Lap" around Northern California before the Space Shuttle Endeavour becomes a museum piece in a Los Angeles museum.

I'll keep this short because I've got some driving to do to get into my photo vantage point.

My SF Giants' magic number is 3. #GoGiants

Things I Like

It’s Wednesday night and I’m feelin’ it alright…

Giants’ Baseball

My San Francisco Giants began the night with a Magic Number of 7. For those not familiar with MLB minutia, the Magic Number in this case is the total of Giants’ wins added to LA Dodgers’ losses. When the Magic Number reaches zero, the Division Title is secured. The Giant s are playing an inspired version of baseball this month .

It’s all too rare when the Giants and their arch rivals the LA Dodgers are battling down to the wire in September.

I like when Tony Bennett sings “I left My Heart” after a Giants home victory.

Tuesday night, Tim Lincecum pitched his best game of the season…he had command of all his “stuff” and had a quality start and tallied the win…and Tony Bennett sang.

Wednesday night, Matt Cain recorded his 15^th win and Tony Bennett sang.

When I was eleven years old, the Giants and Dodgers battled down to the last game. The pennant was decided by a playoff game…which the Giants won, sending them to the World Series vs the New York Yankees. My Dad pulled me out of school to attend Game 2 of the World Series at Candlestick Park where Yankees’ pitcher Whitey Ford humiliated the Giants’ batters with a 1-0 shutout.

49 years later, the game is so much deeper to me…exciting yes, but it’s so much richer to 60 year old me. Baseball has entered it’s second “Golden Age”. Most teams have built new, smaller, stadiums. Dodger Stadium built in 1962 is the third oldest park in the majors after Boston’s Fenway Park and the Chicago Cubs’ Wrigley Field. These new more intimate parks really showcase the National Pastime to today’s fans.

Broken Stuff

All my life it seems like my stuff breaks all at the same time. Flurries of failures…It’s not just the new camera that needs do go back for replacement. My trusty old document shredder finally gave up the ghost, and a pair of my summertime shoes, Merrill Jungle Mocs finally blew out. It’s time for a new Winter pair of Merrill Orbits too.

My Fellowes shredder is more than ten years old, but I finally fed it something that disagreed with it. I spent an hour or more with a bottle of shredder oil and some dental tools trying to make it happy again…FAIL

I hit the internet and looked at new ones. I was prepared to spend around $80 or so, when I decided just to go to Reno and do some hands-on research. Office Depot, COSTCO, and REI are all on the same street, so I hit REI for some new Jungle Mocs before perusing the shredders at Office Depot.

There were no $80 Fellowes machines at Office Depot. The in-store prices were 25% higher than their online prices, and the $129 model was too wimpy for this shopper.

Next door at COSTCO, they had one Fellowes shredder. This one does 12 sheets at a time and eats credit cards and CDs! $99-SOLD! I grabbed a bale of toilet paper, and trolled the SD Cards and there was a $5 Off deal on the pair of 16GB cards I put off last time I was there…WIN!

I got home and assembled the new machine before the Giants-Rockies game. I fed it the first hank of credit card come-ons, and was surprised at how quiet the thing was! No grinding sound, just a firm steady whir…the loudest noise was paper crinkling when the paper ran up against one side of the feed slot!

The best thing? You don’t even have to open the junk mail! This thing eats anything! I read the instructions to find out one thing: How often do I oil it? It says oil it each time you empty the waste bin.

I shredded away during the ballgame, ripping through a year’s worth of junk mail backlog, and oiled four times. The authoritative whir of this machine is almost comforting!

This was an awesome buy all around! Amazon's price is $122.49 I win.

Giants magic number now 5. Giants at AT&T Park today at 12:45PM