Today was the annual Sacramento River King salmon opener below the Red Bluff Diversion Dam, 30 minutes south of Redding, Ca.  Perfect weather and the presence of big, bright King salmon in the Sacramento River made for a great morning of fishing.  We managed to get into a beautiful King salmon first thing in the morning and had a few takedowns that just didn't stick.  Its no wonder the bite was a bit on the slow side, the secton of the river we fished was pretty much a full house.  Every hole had a bunch of boats fishing and it undoubtedly affected the fish in a negative way.  Most of the boats came in with zero salmon, but I heard of at least one boat that had four salmon in the fish box today.  Several boats had scores of one or two, but that wasn't the majority by any means.  We also experienced a lot of grass and moss in the river due to the heavy boat traffic.  The good news is we saw lots of salmon rolling and just about every hole in the our section of the river held salmon today. The other positive was the presence of some nice 3 yr old salmon ranging from 12-20 lbs.  All indicators are pointing to a pretty good salmon season on the Sacramento River.  When things settle dow after this weekend we should start to see some better catch rates, especially during the work week.  This opener will start to peak some interest in salmon fishing on the Sacramento River and our call volume will increase.  Our season schedule is pretty solid already, but with all 4 guides fishing for salmon again this year, we can accomodate a good number of reservations from groups that want to fish for salmon this year.  The season looks very promising so this mght be a good year to experience fishing for big King salmon while its still a fairly strong run.  If the water managers and salmon hatcheries don't pull it together, we may not be salmon fishing in the coming decade or so.  Please call Jaynie with questions or for help with booking your trip.  Thank you!

Capt. Jeff Goodwin