I read Sundrop's report and thought maybe he was onto something with that shad rap trolling idea, so I thought I'd give it a shot up here at Falls. But I don't know if its going to be a reliable long-term strategy because I didn't catch one single striped bass!
I did catch one single largemouth bass, but thats all.
Plenty of paddling, not so much catching. It looks like my captive audience of fish might have finally strayed. The breeze was blowing into Upper Barton, breaking up the water - I never saw any surface action there or in the river channel. I made a couple loops into Lower Barton which was more protected from the wind and there were some small fish riding herd on the shad but I couldn't hook anything up in there. Eventually I managed to run into my one largemouth back at the mouth of Upper Barton. Driving home over the 98 bridge I saw a school of better sized fish busting shad down by the fishing access on the southeast side - maybe next time I'll do like Bugs Bunny and take that left at Albuquerque...