Watching the Steelhead Come into the River for Spawning

Sunday February 7, 2016 Jenner CA.

A nice day

The sun was out and the wind was down as I put my boat in at Jenner this morning. I paddled across the river to Penny Island and down along it’s side headed down towards the river’s mouth.

This is what it looked like as I crossed over towards the mouth area.

I was paddling along here when I ran into Patrick, a guy who lives down this way. He had his camera and was just sitting on the shoreline watching for things to take pictures.

Steelhead coming into the river

Now, Patrick was sitting there for a reason as he was watching some harbor seals working over some steelhead that had just come into the river to spawn and were heading on up along this shoreline right in front of me.

So, I started watching with him. An osprey flew past us with some kind of eel, headed up the river. The osprey are just starting to come into the river area to start their nesting soon.

Patrick was high enough so he could see into the water better than I could from my low angle in the kayak.

He says, here comes three big steelhead, headed right for you. Can you see the three steelhead? They spooked just as they got to me and turned and fled.

Here’s another one that swam past me.

This one came right over to my boat and tried to get under it. It had some blood on it from a recent seal hit. There were a couple seals working them in front of us, but the seals must have been full as they weren’t giving it their all.

River’s mouth is open

This was my view looking across the river to the open mouth from that spot.

Eventually Patrick left, so I continued on down to the end of the river and sat in this wood debris and watched.

There were lots of harbor seals resting on the beach. Here’s some of them.

The ocean was rough and pounding the rocks. This is looking out the open mouth. It’s moved back south a bit and is almost behind the jetty again.

I headed back over towards Penny Island where I saw this little golden eye duck trying to eat something, so I paddled a little closer. It had a little Dungeness crab it had caught and was trying to get it down.