Friday, October 10, 2013 Jenner, CA.
They are going to open up the Russian River Mouth
My brother Mike went with me to kayak Jenner today and we met Steve there too.
As I was putting in I saw a white piece of paper taped to the visitors center door. That’s where they usually post a mouth opening notice and since there was a lady standing there looking at it, I asked her what it said? Something about the mouth being closed, she said. I said, anything about them opening it up? Yes, as she looked back at the notice. Monday, the fourteenth, they are going to open it up with machinery. So, Monday, they will breech the sand dam somewhere with a ditch and usually, it only opens a little until a real low tide, then, it opens all the way up, if all goes right. So, Tuesday, the salmon should be coming up the river, as there should be some out there waiting for it to open so they can come in and go up the river to spawn and die.
Before putting in our boats, we drove down to the river’s overlook on highway one and I took this photo of the closed river mouth. It looks to me like the sand bar is five or six feet high now. High tides and a rough ocean pile the sand up as the waves rush in carrying sand which builds up the dam.
Boats in the water
We put our boats in the water and headed on up the river. We were planning to go up about three and half miles today toward the great blue heron rookery tree.
Since it was a ways up the river we moved along a little faster then normal. It was a bit on the high foggy side as we went, but not much wind.
There were a bunch of these Killdeer along the shore in one place as we passed.
Just past that there were some bovinasourous getting a drink along the shoreline. They didn’t attack, but just looked at us as we passed on by.
Here is one of them, a fine specimen, a female, I think.
We continued on up the river, stopping here and there. We put ashore for a bit across from the Markham hole. This is a picture of that spot.
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We didn’t quite make it to the rookery tree before we decided to turn around and head on back. On the way, we went past some cormorants in a cypress tree getting some sun. The sun was on them nicely so I took some pictures of them.
A bunch of cormorants sunning in a tree.
This is a close up of one of these cormorants sunning.
The wind was starting to pick up a bit as we returned to the Markham hole area, which is in the center of the picture.
Although the wind came up, the sun also came out for a bit, but the wind had a chill to it.
Here we are in the wind with some sun on the water, heading back down the river.
We went into Willow Creek, where the wind wasn’t blowing and took a break on the water in there. When we came back out to the river, the wind had picked up even more.
Here we are scooting along the shoreline, staying out of the stronger wind in the middle of the river.
It was windy until about half way back to Jenner, then it started to calm down and it got fairly nice, but still a bit of a chill on the water.
We pulled our boats off the water around five PM and went on home.
Another fairly nice day on the river.
