Friday, Feb. 1, 2013, Jenner, CA.
I did what I planned to do today.
I was down at Jenner around eleven this morning to kayak, just what I planned to do today, as it looked like it was going to be a nice sunny day. When I got to Jenner, the sun was out and it was just a little breezy, but not bad.
Right away, I noticed a lack of seals and sea lions in the water.
I got the boat in the water. Right away, I noticed the lack of seals and especially all the sea lions that have been hunting in the Jenner Estuary for the last couple of weeks.
I crossed the river over to Penny Island and headed up the river.
A seal did have a small fish though.
While sitting just in front of the East end of the island, I heard a splash. A seal had a medium size fish it was quietly eating, so there was some fish action. I still hadn’t seen any sea lions yet today.
Ray showed up after awhile.
I continued on up the river about a half mile and was sitting at Eagles Landing when Ray joined me in his kayak. He can barely be seen in the photo below, taking at Eagle’s landing., looking down river.
We paddled up the river real slow like.
We paddled up the river a little further, not quite making it to the Highway One bridge. The breeze had mostly died down, the sun was out and it was hard to get enough energy to do much, except sit around and enjoy it.
Still not much sea lion activity today.
I think I only saw one sea lion hunting by while we were up there. There action was really down today, from what it has been.
Lots of geese out, honking away, making a lot of noise today.
There were quite a few of these geese, honking and making a lot of noise today. Below is picture of some of these geese.
We put ashore on Penny Island for a little walk.
After an hour or so, we turned and slowly headed down the river, down the back channel of Penny Island and we put ashore on the West end of Penny Island to stretch our legs a bit.
Below, is a picture of our kayaks where we went ashore on Penny Island.
We walked around on the west end of the island. Below is a picture of where we walked on the Penny Island.
There were a bunch of seagulls bathing in the water on the west end of the island. Below, Ray is checking something out, with the seagulls in the background.
Back in our boats and headed to the mouth of the river.
From there, we got back in our boats and headed down to the river’s mouth to check it out. Still not many seals in the water, or many sea lions either, although, we did see one once in awhile, but the steelhead fishing seemed be be quite a bit less today, however there have been lots of steelhead coming into the river this last week or so, so there are a lot of steelhead fish in the Russian River at this time, up river mostly. The river’s mouth was wide open.
The River’s mouth is still wide open.
I sat at the river’s mouth and took the picture below, looking down the mouth and out toward the Pacific ocean.. There are a lot of seals beached in the sand at the river’s mouth, as you can see if you look close.
Ray and I sat around in our yaks for quite awhile hopping to see something exciting and once or twice we did see a seal or a see lion, but it was mostly just a real nice day down there.
You never know what weird thing might go by.
This sea lion floated by, putting up his fin or tail as you can see below. If one didn’t know it was a sea lion, I’m not sure what one might think this was?
See the picture below for what we saw.
We spent and hour or so just sitting and watching down at the mouth, before heading at a leisurely pace back to the visitor’s center take out.
Had a real nice day at Jenner Kayaking.