Thursday November 21, 2013 Jenner CA.
A lazy day, but kayaked up to Willow creek, just the same
Ray was just putting his boat in the water as I arrived at Jenner today to kayak. Seemed like a nice day. Blue sky and low wind and not too cold. I put my boat in the water and we headed across to Penny Island were we sat for a bit deciding which way to go for the day. Ray said he was feeling lazy so we headed up the river at a very leisurely pace.
Now I was thinking it would be a good day to go up to he Willow creek area, but I didn’t say anything and didn’t think we’d make it up that far as I was feeling a bit lazy today also.
We passed some harbor seals as we crossed over to the south side of the river at the east end of Penny Island. These guys have been hanging here on this redwood log for the last few days or so.
We slowly worked our way up the rivers edge, otter’s log and to eagle’s landing and to Paddy’s rock. It was such a nice day out, Ray says, how about going to Willow Creek?
OK with me, I says, and we slowly keep working our way up that way, under the highway one bridge and on up, about two miles I think?
This is the view we had just after we went under the highway one bridge looking up the river. Lots of coots, if you can see them?
Kayaking into Willow Creek
Eventually, we came to the Willow Creek entrance, which is just in front of and to the right of that electrical pole in the picture below, which we kayaked into.
This is our view as we paddled into the creek, and up the channel, some coots in there too.
Ambush?
As we rounded the turn, this Ninja looking guy shows up. What?
Just a bunch of biologists
Turns out he was a biologist and there were more of them, a bunch of them. They were installing a electronic fish counter.
Here’s Ray talking with them.
We chatted briefly and then continued on up to the end of the creek that we can paddle into, a couple hundred yards or so. This is as far into the creek as we could get. It’s out of the wind and in the sun so we took a break for about a half hour here before heading back out.
On the way out, I noticed these biologists hadn’t hardly moved since we were gone and I jokingly made a comment to them as such. They replied back that Ray and I hadn’t moved much either. Actually, from listening to them as we approached, I could see they were testing the counter to be sure it worked before putting the pipes in the water.
This a a picture of some of the biologists installing the electronic fish counter. The big pipes hold a wire that records the fish as they swim over it, if the fish has had a chip installed into it. They will put this all the way in the water and submerge it.
We learned a lot
Since they were testing and had to wait for results, they had some time to talk, so we did. We found out were they had these counters installed and what they were measuring, Coho Salmon mostly. A guy filled us in on a lot of the work they are doing re-introducing small Coho salmon into the creeks in the area. We learned a lot from these guys. Eventually the head lady came over and said it was working which was our clue to leave them to it and we continued on our way.
We took our time going back down the river and eventually made it back to the Jenner take out area, around four PM.
The sun has about another hour before it is gone for the day in this photo looking out in the direction of Goat Rock, west of course.
Yesterday it was otters, today it was biologists, what will it be tomorrow? :O)
Nice day.