American River Shad chase

Got a chance to get to the American River today in hopes of hooking Shad.
First time I've paddled in a current, and I have to say at times it got interesting.
Put in at Watt Ave. and paddled upstream, hugging the South bank.
Tied off to some Willow looking trees and waded for awhile drifting Shad darts.
Lost about 5 Darts and decided to explore.
Continued upstream for a little way and encountered a little riffle/rapid, couple of kayakers were surfing a small drop off.
I had tried to paddle thru this area earlier and after about 4 mins. of hard paddling I was making no progress. Tried 2 more times to punch thru but damn if it wasn't kinda difficult.
Each failure was followed by an about face and subsequent paddle back.
I paddled up to the surfing zone after watching the 2 boats for a few minutes.
It was pretty cool as I hung for a little while with them.
I was nervous not ever having done this before, being just a paddle length away from the two boats in such a dynamic flow.
Decided I better not chance taking these guys out with a novice move and tried once more to paddle past them upstream - NOT.
Ferried(learned today) over to the far Northern bank and tried to navigate that side - NOT.
Defeated, I pulled over in protected water to rest.
One of the kayakers came within earshot and I gave a hello followed by "how do you get through that riffle?"
"get in your boat, I'll show you" he said.
I hopped in the barge for about a 30 minute lesson on river kayaking.
Anyway, this dude Bob(Penguin Paddlers/rocklin), damn good guy, shows me the line through the riffle, how to read the current, where not to paddle, how to paddle, how to find the soft and reverse flows etc.
Ended up paddling to the island upstream before having to turn around.
All in all I learned alot about kayaking today, didn't catch a shad, but what an F'n workout!

Great day on the water!
Tony

Cool. Nice pics. 

Great post, very interesting. Pics are always the icing on the cake!

Cool!   i had been itching to do some more shad fishing and had also thought about kayaking up the American, as you did, but have been a bit weary due to an experience there about 10 years ago.    I think there is a lot of complexity to river kayaking, and while i am always drawn towards rivers, I am hesitant to go without knowing the how-to's.   Its great that you found someone to show you the ropes.    As the old saying goes -  you can give a man a fish, or you can teach him how to catch  fish (or something like that).  Sounds like you picked up some valuable skills today.