April 21, 2008    Headlines	Russian Slowly Dropping Back In
It's quite on the Russian front but we are getting some good reports from the few soldiers still on the river. A Hotsheet subscriber, Petaluma based nursery owner and occasional abalone dive partner Bruce Snieder drifted the middle section of the Russian on Saturday 3-15. Tossing a gold Cleo from his kayak Bruce hooked 8 and landed four fish all natives including two chromers running from 7 to 12 pounds. On his 8 mile drift he only saw a couple of other anglers and literally had the river to himself. Bruce only asked that we not give up his exact drift but I will say think middle and think high. Fishing pressure has been very light but there are still fresh fish pushing in. Get back out there and catch some chrome fish as there will be few opportunities to do that this year with the closure of the ocean salmon season.  The Russian is still giving up a few bright fish in the middle river as the last of the adults push up into the system. I had a good friend Skip who said he hooked and lost one at Dry Creek on Friday 3-7 and he saw a few other fish hooked and landed just below the mouth of Dry Creek. Pressure is light and should remain so on weekdays and expect a larger influx of anglers on the weekends. I spent the day at the Warm Springs federal hatchery helping the kids from the United Anglers of Casa Grande spawn steelhead on Thursday 3-6. I had three young adults from the program including my son Jake along with friends Rachel, and Haley. They all wrestled about a dozen fish apiece assisting in collecting eggs and milt, mixing the results and helping the fish to recuperate before being released. It's not as easy as it sounds and its a very fast pace operation that you have to keep up with. I had the easy job, collecting a small DNA sample my clipping the tip of a tail on each fish that was handled. I was impressed not only with the kids enthusiasm but the skill of the hatchery workers. They are also raising over 100,000 coho that are to be released into tributaries of the Russian. This is a huge and very scientific program where the brood stocks are carefully separated by lineage. They have close to 100 separate parental stocks in the hatchery and each individual fish is not only counted but they have the DNA of the parents and they will all be individually wired coded. They are hoping that by tracking individual fish and DNA they can distinguish which runs are most successful and then breed along those lines in the future. The biologist in charge says that he expects that they could have a viable run and even possibly a fishery in about 15 years. On the way home we stopped by Dry Creek to check and see if anything was going on. There wee just three other trucks in the parking lot and other than seeing one fish roll at the mouth of Dry Creek there wasn't much to observe. The creek was running clear and the river was in perfect shape with about 20" of viz. River Levels:   For river status (low flow closure) updates from Fish and Game please call +1.707.442.4502 for the North coast and +1.707.944.5533 for Central coast streams. Be sure to check out the California Fish and Game regulations before you go. Regulations vary on every river and you need to pay attention to bait and hook restrictions. Due to winter closures on HWYs 5, 101 & 299 we recommend you check Caltrans road conditions as well.   Caught Fish? Looking for timely informative updates? Check out a FREE trial to the Northern California Hotsheet, California's fastest growing fishing newsletter. The Hotsheet is emailed three to four evenings per week direct to your desktop. No hunting the web for information or waiting on an outdated magazine to arrive in the mail. These in-depth reports keep you on top of what is happening TODAY so you can catch more fish tomorrow! Just $3.50 per month when you subscribe for one year. You can receive a free week's trial copy by e-mailing a request to fishsite@aol.com