Its safe to say that Shasta Lake is fishing as it normally does during the summer season.  There are small Shad schools pretty much everywhere we go in the lower lake now and the thermocline is now established.  This means its important to focus your efforts at depths that are cold enough to hold salmon and trout.  There's a broad range of depths fish are marking on sonar, but I'm finding the best bite at the top end of the temperature ranges, which is the mid 60 degree range.  Feel free to chase those big marks down deep but be prepared to go a good while in-between bites. The 50-70' range has been my best and most productive depths in recent days.  All the salmon and trout are gaining weight as they do most years around this time.  The fishing in July turns up some great salmon and trout, but August and September usually produce the heavy weight rainbows, and this season, the biggest Kokanee salmon as well.  We've had a great year on Shasta this year, but the remainder of July and most of August will be the final months of our summer season before moving all of our boats to the river to fish King salmon.  After that, late fall (Mid to late November) brings the start to our winter fishing on Shasta Lake where we begin to target rainbows and browns again.  We still have a lot of good fishing ahead and the conditions on and around Shasta Lake are still great.  The lake has received a lot of bad press with our current drought year, but the central and southern California media have it all wrong.  Their press has been driving business away from northern California all summer with claims of no water in Shasta and many other bodies of water for out of area travelers to recreate in.  That just isn't the case and in reality, we have a lot of water and good fishing going on every day right now.  If our conditions do deteriorate to a level that it adversly affects Shasta Lake or the Sacramento River and its fishing, I'll be one of the first to let you know.  Business has been great in many ways, but we are seeing lower numbers of calls, and bookings than we saw by this time last summer.  If you want to fish Shasta Lake or the Sacramento River this summer, don't let dramatic news media stories be the reason you decided not to fish this year.  As it stands now, you'll really be missing out on a great day on the water doing what you love to do.  

Captain Jeff Goodwin