need help sacramento river
 

I know many will be reluctant on sharing their favorite spots but i need general help. I've never boarded or boated the sac. Discovery park is about 10 minutes from me. Where do you board on the sac? Is there any areas I should be concerned with? I.e. low depth, sand bars... Also discovery park seems to be loaded on the weekends. Is there a better launch to go from?

To my knowledge the areas above the red are no wake zones. I know nothing about the sac beyond that. I always boarded oroville and folsom. Due to unfortunate circumstances and folsom being a puddle I'm just looking at other options.

http://i61.tinypic.com/2dlsro6.jpg

Elkhorn launch by swabbies can be a little better, but if the water is low the end of the ramp is too close to launch for me. Miller park is another disaster on weekends. I've never launched at Garcia bend so I'm not sure in that, in the pocket area. My advice is launch early and grab brunch at the sturgeon. Otherwise the only low spot is up at Verona where the sac river goes left and the feather river is ahead to the right, stay on the sac side as the feather dumps all it's silt on the right. This would be if you were traveling up river. You can also launch at Verona. Usually we launch at discovery and head up river thru the 5 mph zones, once past highway 80 you can shred away. That's usually awesome water but on summer weekends it's full of idiots, so if you push further up river from swabbies it can be quieter. Same goes for the southern end, once downriver from Garcia bend getting towards clarksburg, usually quieter on weekends.

When on the river if you see buoys in the water it marks Wing Dams usually. Stay to the center of the river near them....DO NOT go inside them towards the shore!!!
Gnar is right about North of I80 it is usually good midweek and before 11 am on weekends.
Dont hug the shoreline too much along the river....snags in spots and fishermans lines....lol

need help sacramento river
 

Gnar pretty much covered it. Naming the main launches from north to south(correct me if I'm wrong) would be Verona, Elkorn, discovery park, miller park and Garcia bend.

Garcia bend is a one lane launch and you can get a lot of idiots out there that launch the boat by themselves and then tie it up on the launch side of the dock(blocking it) while they park and think that's ok. At miller and Elkorn few people can launch at the same time.

Discovery park has a great family atmosphere, especially on Sundays right where the American meets the sac haha

You don't want to launch anywhere south of Garcia bend. It's all terrible down there;)

Anyone ever use broderick in west sac? That's just down the road from me. I know it sounds dumb but the reason I never used the river was because I was too worried about shallow areas and drunk boaters. I used to pass discovery on the freeway on the weekends and it was always PACKED plus all the boats tied up drinking on the American river side.

need help sacramento river
 

Guilty as charged.

Launch at discovery. Mosey up to crawdads/Chevys.
Stroll on down to the tie up.

Just steer clear of discovery in general.

At Discovery or any other river launches, make sure you have NOTHING in your vehicle worth stealing. Couple years ago I had someone break my $700 back window out of my truck to steal $10 worth of change in my ash tray plus my truck smelled like cigarette smoke from the crack head that ripped me off for a week. I have a friend who had his stereo stolen TWICE at Miller Park. Not saying don't go. Just saying hide your stuff and don't be a target.

EXACTLY WHAT HE SAID^^
last summer my buddy left a shovel or something of the like in the bed of his truck. Hooligans used his things to break his window and steal his stereo.
But they left the old kicker 10" that was laying in a box in the bed of his truck LOL.

I try to not leave my truck there, especially with anything in the bed of the truck that can break a window.
I hate that parking lot at discovery. I try to avoid parking there like the plague.

Broderick can be tricky because the ramp is perpendicular to the river current so you are getting pushed sideways. But the price is right. Garcia has a silt pile under water on the ramp so it can be tricky to pick up the boat because it's hard to get your trailer level. Miller park is ok, discovery may have the worst "boaters" ...some dude slid his truck and borrowed wakeboat down the ramp into my Yukon while I was launching...douchbag extraordinaire.

This might help you too.
http://www.sacramentoriver.org/access_site.php?index=1

Thanks for the heads up. My truck has a stock head unit, hopefully that will help. what truck has a $700 rear window?!

It was an 03 Ram tinted sliding rear window. Maybe it was $650... That was my old truck. I'd hate to see what the new truck's power rear window would cost. Ouch!

Mine had a stock deck too. They were after the nickels and dimes in my ash tray which was open. Scumbags.

Rode my bike out to elkhorn and watched some people launch and drop their trailers over the ledge. I didn't wanna risk it on the recovery so I launched at discovery which was actually quiet aside from the people prepping their boats on the ramp. Launched and headed out. It's waaaay shallow. I hit something on the way out, and on the recovery. Not sure what it was because my hull, scags, rudder and prop have no scratches...

Anyone been out to discovery lately? Headed up sat to head to old sac little nervous about water depth and **** in the river, but from what I seen so far just stay in the middle an way from the shore line..

http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?VON That should show the river level at Verona, when Verona is above 10ft, disco is ok to launch, elkhorn gets too shallow though. Disco has been hovering around 11.5ft so the salinity of the delta stays where it should.