Y’know I had the same thought myself

Hi Scott, Welcome to the party.  Another davisite here. If you can make it down the perilous hill at the pope canyon bridge you can launch for free and get ~3 miles of paddling in a 5 mph tributary arm. It’s deceptively far as others have pointed out, you’ll hit the dam in 30 mins and have at least another 30 before you park. Lotta water in the delta if you can stand the wind and it takes a lot of learning to find the good launches. Closest free launch to Davis is probably port of sac which there is an excellent thread on here that breaks it all down. Nice for a quick out and back but if I have the time I’d go to Bullards berryessa or clear lake or even pardee. If you want a quick up the mountain to beat the heat sugar pine and jenkinson stay cool in the summer and are about an hour (traffic willing). Enjoy!

It’s been all panic from the start, and the costs of that will haunt us for a long time, not just economic ones

Anybody who doubts there are psychosocial costs to how we’re approaching this should rethink. Whatever the two docs in the video got wrong, that wasn’t one of them. Somebody else here talked about seeing more abuse cases etc, there’s nothing remotely questionable in that claim, it’s exactly the kind of thing you would expect in a society and economy under current circumstances. We’re seeing some of it where I work

If you think only about the already huge homeless population that didn’t exist just a few decades back, what will that problem be like now? California’s economy is bigger than a lot of nations, our unemployment money is now running in deficit. A family I know in Hawaii has no income right now and can’t even connect with their unemployment agency to file

Just for sake of comparison look at any country that kept their economy open, pick any of one of them and look at everything, control of infection rate, death rate, economic and social costs etc, vs what we are doing

If you still think “keeping the boot on the neck” is a good idea lay it all out for us. We had other options from the start

I’m fortunate to work in the business I do, it gives me perspectives I couldn’t get anywhere else. Research and stats etc have value for sure, we live by the science behind all of it. Most of the time we just have to act on what we see in front of us, questions are considered essential even in the thick of complicated emergencies But nobody’s arguing about stats or data or whatever

This is a situation where only a few lucky people will be immune to the economic aftermath

I guess that the culmination of the “models and data no bias” was to get hijacked by a small percentage of extremely vocal posters arguing that letting thousands of our most vulnerable neighbors die is a good thing because of “gubment boots on mah neck” seems a good enough reason for me to leave. I know no one likes to speak ill of other posters and there have been efforts to keep things civil and politics free but this shit keeps happening and it’s pretty f-ing tiring

I caught a nice ~4 lb striper in steamboat slough whilst bass fishing last weekend. It's not a classic striper spot like Sherman but they're there (especially if you fish deeper around the rip-rap channel swings or drift bait). You can launch from brannan down south or steamboat landing at the top (I've never launched from here and I think they don't open until 10 on winter hours but it's an appealing location with the sac river right there)

I've lurked on a lot of advice pages and everyone has different opinions but for me one of the better things I've seen is that yaks are full of trade-offs. Trade-offs between between cheap and expensive, speed and stability, between simplicity and complexity, etc.... If you take the plunge you will be reminded constantly of the limitations and downsides of the trade-offs you've accepted and sometimes you're going to have to play to your strengths and sometimes you decide it's too much and go back to the drawing board and accept a different set of trade-offs. And if you're like me that cycle of testing and refinement may never end

My honest opinion is that doing your homework is important, but don't take everything you read on the internet (except everything I say of course  ) with a grain of salt. I personally believe the best way to figure things out is to get out and experience it, whether you have to go spend some time in a rental or find a place that does demos. The important thing is to fit your decisions around your preferences and acknowledge the trade-offs entering in ahead of time. Also be ready because your preferences are going to change completely (I lust over boats and gadgets I never would have even considered when I was getting started, YAY!).

Also the community is super swell

I haven't fished on the mokelumne side but I've launched from hogback before and it was a good time. From my experience with the north delta Sac side (which seemed to be confirmed by others ) is that it's a numbers but not size area. In the few times I've gone it's been full of little smallies/spots/largies if you fish down the rip rap. I've caught better largies in the weedy slackwater with timber but nothin the size that people routinely get in the delta delta. Aaron Leisure has a few good videos on youtube about getting started in both the sac and mokelumne (they can be a bit cheesy but have some good info) and I think informative fisherman has a video about smallmouth fishing on the sac river that's gotta be somewhere in the viera's/hogback/walnut grove area.

When I fish there I cover water fast: crankbaits, topwaters, small swimbaits, hard and soft jerkbaits and I generally pick fish up one here one there all up and down the channels. On the rocks or off the rocks, the water tends to be clearer and smallies and spots I catch seem like they've wandered off cover. If you wanted to slow down I'm sure small jigs, worms (dropshots/shakyhead), or tubes would also catch em especially on the rocky areas