Have any of you tried fishing small sabiki rigs in the lakes with shad? Close to clsoing, lake 3 at Santee Lakes has tons of shad start coming to the surface, and was wondering if they could be caught throwing sabikis?

I think probably a bad idea. DFG law makes it pretty clear that if you're catching fish for bait you need to catch it by hand, with a dip net, or using a trap. You can read about it at:

http://www.fgc.ca.gov/2006/06freshfishregbook.pdf

Look in the Bait Regulations Chapter. I seem to remember that it used to be legal to use umbrella nets but they don't make mention of that in there any more.

Well, you learn something new everyday. Yes, sabiki rigs will work on shad, guess I broke the law. Also, I did it in the Delta one time and to my surprise caught 3 inch largemouth and stripers on every drop.