Monday January 20, 2014 Jenner CA.
Checking out the big wave action at the river’s mouth
When I awoke this morning, I was in a quandary. I wanted to go down to Jenner to check out the big wave action at the high tide, it was around one PM. But I also needed to try to fix my bad car miss, that seems to be real bad when it’s cold, but ok when the car warms up.
I figured out it must be a thermotemp sensor so I needed to get one. That’s the thing that tells the computer if the cars engine is cold or hot. So, I went to Santa Rosa early and found that part, of course it was expensive. Then I went to Costco to try and find some corn free food. I found some things I can eat and was home in time to get on down to Jenner for the high tide around one PM.
I didn’t get the car parts installed, but that can wait.
Kayaking Jenner looking for big fish
The high tide was a bit lower today, than yesterday and the ocean was, maybe a bit not as rough, not to say it wasn’t’ rough, because it was, just a little less than yesterday.
I had in mind to try and see if I could see any more big fish come in on the high waves like what happened yesterday. Yesterday was a clue to watch for big fish action when the waves are breaking over the sand, something I didn’t know before.
CHP’s with flashing lights
As I entered Jenner there were a bunch of CHP cars with lights flashing right near where I had to turn into the parking lot. I edged over there like I owned the place and signaled one of the cops I wanted to enter the parking lot and he motioned me to proceed. I didn’t know that red Corvette sitting there was going to get filmed for some show and they had blocked the road for the shooting.
I found that out at the launch ramp, while putting my boat in the water.
Even though I didn’t expect to find the water breaking over the closed mouth sand like yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to use what I learned yesterday about the big fish coming over the sand to learn some more, if I could, so I headed on down that way.
High tide was just about the time I got down there, which might also mean the ocean was a little slacker at the this time.
This is the view of the river’s mouth area. A small wave has broken over the sand, but not big enough to bring big fish into the river.
As you can see the ocean was rough enough, but there wasn’t a real high, high tide today, so most of the time the big waves just shot in the air off the jetty and rocks.
This view shows another wave that has broken over the sand, but too small to carry the big fish in.
The ocean was real rough and every once in awhile a big wave like this one would come and slam into the sandy beach, but very few of them broke on over the sand.
While I was sitting there watching things two kayakers approached me. John and Cheryl showed up. As you can see they are very kicked back people on their yaks.
We sat around for awhile and shot the bull and watched the waves, but none of them carried any big fish in while we where there.
After awhile, we headed on back to the west end of Penny Island and up the back channel to the little channel on the east end where we hung out for an hour or so just enjoying the day and shooting the bull.
Here we are in the little channel shooting the bull.
They went on in for the day and I decided to go back down to the west end of Penny Island for a bit.
This is my view from the west end of Penny Island, looking back towards the mouth area.
I decided to go back down to the river’s mouth as the wave action looked like it had picked up a bit.
Some pretty nice wave action.
An interesting thing happened
While I as watching, a butch of harbor seals, all of a sudden swim over to the closed mouth area where the waves were occasionally breaking over the sand. I don’t know how they knew a larger wave than normal large was about to come over the sand, but they sure did.
Shorty after they got to the sand edge, a large wave broke over the sand and flowed into the river. There was some scrambling of the seals and several sea lions showed up too. I didn’t see them catch any big fish, but they might of caught some smaller stuff, but I could not tell for sure. I was sorta surprised by this action.
It leads me to think more big fish come into the river using this method than I had previously thought.
I was a little slow getting pics of this as I didn’t expect it.
Here are the seals just after the super wave hit the beach. Shortly after that, they went back about their business elsewhere.
That was interesting, so I stayed down there a bit longer, but didn’t see any more super waves come over the sand while I was there.
But I did see the sun go down.
After the sun went down, I started on back to the launch ramp at a leisurely pace, as it was real nice out now, the water was calm and flat.
I checked the gauge at the visitor center. Looks like just above six feet and it was just under six feet yesterday, so it’s coming up real slow now. The mouth is usually taken out with an excavator after it hits seven feet on this gauge.
This is my last shot of the day, the sun has gone down.
I pulled my boat out and went on home and didn’t feel like putting that part in my car yet.
Hey, it runs fine when it’s warm, just not when it’s cold. I’ll get it. :O)
Nice day kayaking Jenner.