John and I Do a Salvage Run From Monte Rio to Jenner With Lots of River Otters

Tuesday December 20, 2016 Monte Rio to Jenner CA.

Seems to be a river otter type day

I met John at Monte Rio this morning and we took his truck down to Jenner setting up a shuttle to kayak down to Jenner. We dropped his truck at Jenner and drove back to Monte Rio to the boat ramp. The boat ramp was real muddy from the recent rain water. The water comes up and the mud settles out on the ramp leaving some real snotty mud. John had boots, but not me.

Muddy boat ramp

Here we are on the ramp in the mud putting in and headed on down the river. I was careful and only got a little mud in my boat.

First of the river otters

We didn’t get far when John  says otters over there and sure enough some otters where working there way up the river fairly fast going somewhere.

The river was still flowing fairly good after the recent rains so we mostly just drifted on down the river at a leisurely pace.

We are just above Moscow pool here.

We ran into another otter just above Casini’s Ranch.

Drifting by the Casini Ranch

Here’s John as we drifted by the Casini Ranch.

We were drifting just below Casini’s Ranch and ran into some more otters.

And I spied this great egret fishing along the shoreline.

We moved on down below the Duncan’s  Mills bridge area and went by these geese which were doing a bunch of honking. They sure can make a lot of noise.

Otters grooming

Seems like there were a lot of river otters out today as we went by these guys.

A little closer look as they watched us pass on by.

We drifted down the river taking our time shooting the bull most of the way.

What’s that John

Just past Markham pool I spied this thing over on the shoreline. We couldn’t tell what it was so went over to have a look. It was some kind of tube, sorta fiber glassy stuff. We rolled it the water to see if it would float, but it just got stuck there in the mud and luckily John didn’t want it. :O)

Looking for salvage

Part of what we are doing on this trip is salvaging. Looking for stuff that came down the river when the water came up from the recent rains. We did find one kayak, but it was old so we left it. And of course John’s a fisherman, so is always looking for fishing tackle. He picked up a couple nice lures

We were just above the highway one bridge at Bridge Heaven when we spotted four more river otters.

They came out of the water and sat on these rocks and watched us. They were real relaxed and started grooming as we passed.

Hey John, let’s move that log

It wasn’t long and we pulled into the Jenner boat ramp. I had John help me move that big branch off the ramp as I tried to move it the other day, but it was too much for me in my older age.

John gives me a good dinner

We loaded the boats in John’s truck and drove back to Monte Rio to retrieve my car. I followed John up to his house so he could give me a half of a crab and a nice fish fillet which I had for dinner. Hummm good.

That was my day.