The Fishermen and I Are on the River in The Rain

Monday January 4, 2016, Monte Rio CA.

It was showering today as I got it going, but it was starting to let up, so I headed down to Jenner. There was a good breeze blowing when I got to Jenner and it seemed a bit chilly so I drove down to the river’s mouth overlook to have a look at things.

The ocean was real rough and has been piling up sand closing up the mouth a little. Note the harbor seals are resting on the sand today and not eating any steelhead while I was down there. It was going to low tide, so when it goes to high tide, the mouth will be open more.

These big waves carry in sand that can build up behind the jetty and cause the mouth to dam up. Those are mostly seagulls down there on the sand.

This is the open mouth at a low tide with an ocean wave washing into the river as I watched.

You can see the mouth isn’t closed as the river water on the left is flowing into the ocean and starting to open up a bigger channel. There were some harbor seals in the little channel watching things carefully for big fish.

I didn’t see any big fish eaten today while I was there. After awhile I decided to head back up to Monte Rio to kayak for the day so headed back to Monte Rio and put my boat in the water and headed down river.

The fishermen where there fishing away. I stopped to talk with them a bit. They had two steelhead so far.

I left them hard at it and let my boat drift down stream which looked like this.

I stopped at the Villa Grande hole in this spot and watched.

It started to rain lightly, so I went over to the beach to don my rain pants. I already had my rain coat on as it’s also my wind breaker that I wear most of the time while paddling.

Eventually I paddled down stream some more and stopped in this spot under a big redwood tree.

As I sat under the big redwood tree, it started to rain harder, so I stayed there until it changed to a drizzle and continued down stream some more.

I’m waiting out the rain at this spot under a big tree.

I paddled on down to Sheridan beach which is off to my right where the gravel is.

When I made it to the Sheridan beach the rain picked up some and I could see it was getting ready to rain a little harder and might not stop now, so I started heading back up the river in a light rain. It was really a pleasant paddle as it wasn’t cold.

Here I’m paddling by the Villa Grande hole, moving up the river.

I had to switch to my backup camera which is waterproof for these next photos as it was raining lightly now as I approached the guys in the boats fishing. Their count of fish was still only two today, so far.