Friday January 10, 2014 Guerneville CA.
Checking out the steelhead fishermen
I had a hard time figuring out what to do today. I was thinking of going to Santa Rosa to shop for some food, but wasn’t really into it. That would keep until next week.
I was also thinking of checking out the steelhead fishermen around the Guerneville area with my car, so that’s what I did.
First I stopped at Ray’s house, who lives down the road from me and asked him for directions on how to get down to the beach just above the Vacation Beach summer dam.
Guerneville beach steelhead fishing
Then I went on down to Guerneville and went to the beach in town, Johnson’s beach to see what the fishing action was. I was looking for Johnny, just for something to do, he’s a local fisherman I know, but I didn’t find him here. I did find Richard and I shot the bull with him awhile while he took his boat off the water, I hadn’t seen him in a long time.
Here is a picture of what I saw at the Guerneville beach, looking down stream, just below the summer dam. Not many fish caught today, but they are in the river, just the same.
I headed down river to the fishing hot spot
Richard gave me some more directions to get to the beach above the Vacation beach dam, down below Guerneville, so I headed down there and found the river access spot without too much trouble.
This is my view as I walked down to the beach. No Johnny here, but I shot the bull with this guy for awhile before checking out the rest of the beach. Seems the steelhead weren’t biting much today.
This is the view looking down river from the lower side of that beach.
OK, let’s go kayaking at Jenner
By now, I decided to go to Jenner to kayak for the rest of the day. As I was traveling down there I saw a lot of trucks parked at the Duncan’s Mills fire house. Some of them I recognized as biologists trucks that are installing fish counters across the river in places. These counters can read special tags in the fish as the fish pass over the counters. I thought I’d stop in and see what’s going on there, maybe on the way back today?
Too much fog at Jenner
As I as entering the town of Jenner, the fog was coming in big time, so I drove down to the river’s mouth to see if it might be closed as the ocean was beating on the beach making a lot of noise, like it was real rough, which could close the river’s mouth.
When I stopped the car to look down at the river’s mouth from the highway one overlook, it was all fogged in and I couldn’t hardly see the mouth, but I think it was open. I took a picture, but it was all white with fog.
At this point I decided to go back to Monte Rio to Kayak for the rest of the day, so got back in my car and headed in that direction.
Stopped to talk with the biologists at the counter
This seemed like a good time to stop in at the Duncan’s Mills fire station and see what the biologists were doing in the river there.
As I pulled in, there’s Johnny. I finally caught up with him. He was just going on down the biologists foot trail to wade out in the water to fish for a bit. We shot the bull for a bit, mostly about the fish.
As we approached where the biologists were, they were just starting to have their lunch.
Johnny asked if they were counting any fish in their counter. The guy said they mostly have tags in Coho Salmon and not too many in Steelhead. But he said they’ve counted some Coho salmon and some steelhead going by. I was surprised to hear the Coho Salmon are still coming up the river at this time.
Johnny was eager to get fishing so he waded on out into the water and I talked with the biologists while they ate their lunch. One of the things I asked them was what were the little floats doing across the river up by the golf course, but they didn’t know.
I talked with them for quite awhile then snapped these pictures of the fishermen fishing down below them.
This one is looking down river, I think one of those guys is Johnny.
And this one is looking up river, just below Casini’s from the same spot.
Would you like a cookie? Yes, but
Just as I was leaving one of the biologists offered me an oatmeal cookie, which I had to turn down because of my corn allergic thing. What, you say there’s no corn in an oatmeal cookie, I wish. The alcohol for the vanilla is from corn. The oil or butter used can have things derived from corn in them,the wheat flour used to make them may also have things derived from corn in them, like the carrier to put the bleach in the flour. Unfortunately, sorry, I can’t eat it, but thanks. :O) It’s a curse.
Kayaking Monte Rio
Anyway, I drove back to Monte Rio and put my boat in the water. There was one boat in the slot. Dave with two friends. I shot the bull with him for a bit. He’d been there most of the day and hadn’t caught anything. I left him at it and paddled down river to Villa Grande.
Dave fishing in the slot at Monte Rio for steelhead fish.
I paddled down to Sheridan beach where I stayed for a bit before heading back up the river.
Just as I came around the turn from there, these female merganser ducks were resting on this redwood stump.
It had been fairly breezy down this way, but as I returned back up to the Villa Grande Hole, the wind was calming down.
This is the view of the Villa Grande hole as I was paddling back up the river.
I stopped in the sun just past the hole and sat for awhile warming up. This great blue heron was sitting close by me getting some sun too.
Eventually, I headed back up to Monte Rio. These mallard ducks greeted me as I neared the boat ramp at Monte Rio. The ducks are real friendly here.
I pulled my boat out and went on home for the day.
I had an interesting day. It seems there are lots of big fish in the river and lots of fishermen, but not too many fish are getting on the hooks. Steelhead fishing is like that.
Nice day.