Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013, Jenner, CA.
A slow start today.
I wasn’t feeling too good when I got up this morning. Maybe more than the redwood tree pollen is getting me?
I did get going though and headed down to Jenner to kayak for the day. The weather man put off the rain for awhile, but did say it would be a little windy and chilly. He was right, it was a little windy and a little on the cool side down there today.
The weather was windy and chilly.
When I put my boat in the water, I could hear the ocean pounding the beach. It as a bit windy, but not white capping, I mean the river. The wind wasn’t’ that strong, but it had a chill to it, so I dressed warm for it.
The estuary water level was up, was the mouth closed?
I also noted that the estuary water level had come up another couple of feet. Could the river’s mouth have closed from the high tides? The water level was just at the bottom of the launch trail on the left side of the visitor’s center. That makes it hard to launch there, but I did anyway.
I was eager to check out the situation at the river’s mouth, but decided top paddle across the river to the island and up the river to the Eagle’s landing area, about a half mile up.
Stopped at the Penny Island channel first.
So, off I went, feeling the chill in the air. The water was up really high, which made the channel on the east end of Penny Island larger than normal. I sat out of the wind there for about a half hour before moving on. I wasn’t seeing seals or sea lions in the water, which indicates not much big fish coming up the river today.
Made it to Eagle’s landing.
From there, across the river and up, not much happening, except the cool wind. I persisted and made it up to Eagle’s landing, but the wind was blowing into that area, so I didn’t stay long and headed back down the river, as I wanted to check out what was going on at the river’s mouth to cause the water level to rise so much.
The chilly wind made it not so pleasant to stop along the way.
The way the chilly wind was blowing today, made it not so pleasant to stop in most of my standard places, so I made fairly good time down to the river’s mouth area, not seeing much of anything exciting, but there are always a lot of birds around. There were a few seals in the water and I saw one sea lion go by.
Lot’s of drift wood had moved down around the mouth area.
As I approached the river’s mouth, I noticed a lot of drift wood piled up nicely all along the river’s beach on the north side. All this new wood came down the river during the last storm and piled up along the shores of the estuary. As the water in the estuary rises, it floats this wood and it works it way down to the mouth, where it eventually works it way out to the ocean, slowly as the year progresses.
You can see some of this wood in the picture below, which is looking out the river’s mouth, just as I’m approaching it.
Lot’s of wood on the south shore of the river’s mouth, as can be seen in the pic below.
I stopped just at the head of the mouth channel and took the picture below. You can see the seals resting on the shore line to the left. I think there were about a hundred seals down there today.
It doesn’t look like the river is open to the ocean in these photos, but it turns a sharp corner where you see the sand cut, that’s why you can’t see it pouring into the Pacific ocean from this angle.
The Pacific ocean was fairly rough and pounding the sandy beach, which it’s been doing a lot lately.
Too windy and cool for me today.
I was a bit on the cold side as the wind was penetrating, so didn’t stay very long and headed back in. Didn’t see much in the way of sea lion action today, which usually means there aren’t many big fish coming up the river to lay eggs.
Steve reported sea lions eating fish at Monte Rio today.
I did get a report from Steve who was at Monte Rio fishing, that he witnessed two sea lions eating two down streamers, which are spent steelhead, just in front of the Monte Rio boat ramp. There seems to be a lot of these real spent down streamers, or what I call go backs in the river this year. Not sure why they get more beat up one year than another?
Anyway, I was off the river by two pm and went home and just crashed, out of energy. I did get the bed sheets washed for my van and a couple other little things done too, but not much, mostly couch. :O)