Paddle At Jenner After the Rains Bring the River Up a Bit

Wednesday December 28, 2022 Jenner CA.

Paddle day

More rain coming in tonight, but today was to be a nice day. I thought I better get out on the  river while I can. I wasn’t sure just how high the river was from the last rains the other day.

Monte Rio boat ramp

I rode on down to Monte Rio as it’s on the way to Jenner, which was by the ocean where I was planning to go for the day.

The river was a bit muddy and about five or six feet higher than normal  at the boat ramp.

Jenner overlook

I continued on to Jenner, down by the ocean and drove through town to the overlook at the river’s mouth where it flows into the Pacific ocean, here.

River’s mouth

The extra water from the recent rains have the mouth opened up pretty wide and the ocean was a bit rough.

There were plenty of harbor seals resting on the sand down there.

Putting in

Everything looked good so I drove on back to the Jenner boat ramp to put in my boat. Only trouble was the boat ramp was full of debris from when the water was up a short time ago from the last rains. I checked things out and decided I could just pull my boat over this stuff to get to the water which I did.

Bath time

As I put my boat in the water I went by this black bird that was taking a bath, quite close, just a few feet from me, but it didn’t seem to care as it was into it’s bath.

Up the river

The wind was down nicely today as I paddled across the river and slowly headed on up the river by Penny Island, here.

There were some high clouds and some light fog in the air as I paddled along going up the river.

The flush

The water was a bit muddy and there was debris coming down from the higher waters and a lot of duck weed was also coming down the river from up the river. When the river goes up from rains, it’s like a big flush which cleans the river out. The higher the water, the better the flush.

Watch spot

I paddled up about a mile to just below this highway bridge where I pulled in near shore and sat in my boat to watch the goings on.

Headed down river

From there, I crossed over the river to go down the other side to look for critters along the river’s edges.

There were a couple hundred mud hens feeding along the shoreline.

This great white egret was fishing for small fish along the shoreline.

I paddled down along here headed back to the boat ramp, just up ahead.

This male great blue heron was fishing along the shoreline and doing pretty good catching small fish to eat.

Hard time landing

Back at the ramp, I had a hard time getting in close enough as there were rocks just under the water that I was hitting before I could get onto the boat ramp and the logs limited the places I could land my boat. I persisted and made it without getting wet.

I had to pull my boat over the logs to get it loaded back on my car and I headed for home for a nice nap.

Nice day.