American River Shad and Stripers

I hope everyone is doing well and weathering the poor economy. I've been on the American River the last two days shad and striper fishing and here's a quick run down of how it went.

Wednesday I met a buddy of mine and we got on the water about 11 am and only fished for about 3 hours (not exactly prime time but it was all the time we had). We spent more time fishing for stripers than shad and caught one and lost another. We stopped and fished for shad in two spots for a total of one hour and landed 10 which is pretty good for the middle of the day. For those of you that have not shad fished before, they are about 2 - 5 pounds and put up a great fight on light tackle spinning gear or fly rods.
Yesterday, I had two clients and one had never fly fished before so we split our time between stripers and shad. We used conventional gear with plugs for the stripers and landed two and lost two and saw quite a few more including one that I would guess to be about 20 - 25 pounds.
We landed about 10 or 12 shad and lost at least that many more on flies and conventional gear both. The shad were not biting as well as the day before but we saw hundreds of them. They are pretty thick in there right now. The stripers are just starting and should get better between now and the end of August.
I am running a special until the end of June for half day shad and striper trips on the American River. My normal rate is $325 for four hours of fishing and the special price is $300 and I'm doing five hours instead of four. This includes drinks and all your gear but no lunch. We can fly fish or use conventional gear on these trips. I'm also running a full day special (8 hours with lunch) good on the American or the Yuba and is good until the end of August. If you book two trips at my normal price of $425, you get $75 off your second trip.