Hi, I'm also in the Sacramento area and you're right, it's nearly impossible to find appropriate live fish for your garter here. However, you should be able to switch it over to either frozen thawed mice or frozen thawed fish rather easily. Petco has both mice and silversides or you could go to the grocery store and get a salmon or trout fillet and slice it into appropriate sized strips. Just put a couple of the live fish that he's used to in a small bowl of water with the dead(frozen thawed) prey item and he's very likely to hit the dead prey item and swallow it. Usually you only need to do this a couple of times and they'll readily accept your prefered food.

Sorry if this has all been mentioned... didn't read through the entire thread again.