Eel River Salmon Survey Trip - 12/16/13

I was fortunate to be included in a survey trip today on the main stem Eel, way out in the middle of nowhere!  I had to join in late, and I'm glad for that because even between 11 and noon when I was accessing mountain roads to get there I encountered many frozen spots, washboard, and otherwise difficult conditions.  I made it to the riverbar at Fort Seward around 1215.  By 1227 I was launched and headed upstream toward Alderpoint 6 to 7 miles to the south.  Pat Higgins and his buddy Dave were on the way down in a canoe, and another yakker, Walker Wise, had left to paddle upstream from my starting point earlier this morning.  I knew I could only go two hours upstream since it would get dark in 4.5 hours.

I paddled under the Fort Seward bridge and immediately found some chinook carcasses, but most of them were inaccessible in a pool - huge fish to 40"+ littered the bottom in one stretch.  I continued upstream documenting a few more carcasses, some redds and live fish.  About two miles up I'd taken the camera out to get a picture of a nice big redwood down by the water's edge; its iconic shape silhoutted against the blue sky.  Just after that, as I'm paddling up through a long stretch of wide and relatively shallow water around 4-5' deep, I spot what I thought for a moment was a very large king, but then I realized it was a sturgeon!  In the crystal clear water and now just a few feet off my bow, this huge fish didn't seem to be concerned with me at first.  I hopped up to the XUP position and it decided to cruise out of there and into a deeper hole just upstream.  I'd gotten a few photos and was jazzed to have seen this fish.  I continued on, walking up over more riffles in a few miles than I'd ever had to deal with - the water is very low.

Within about 45 minutes I met up with Pat Higgins, super-bio guy who's totally tied into the Eel scene - see "Eel River Recovery Project"- his buddy Dave with the canoe, and Walker Wise on his Prowler 15 and a resident of the hills out there - seriously the middle of NOWHERE...  We got acquainted and shared some stories, saw a golden eagle, I told them of the sturgeon, and we made our way down.  I'd probably gotten up about 3 miles or more in my 1.67 hours on the water to that point, so I was happy with that.  We took time to check out some great redds on the way down - one of them with dozens of spawning sites over a hundred yard stretch - and we saw the sturgeon again!  It looks to be a green sturgeon of around 6' or more, but it could be white...  Either way, it was so awesome to be XUPing around and it's under the yak, alongside the yak, in shallow water, in deeper but crystal clear water...  It was world class wildlife 101.   

Got back down toward the truck around 345 and hung with Pat for quite a while as Dave and Walker shuttled to get their rig from upstream.  I'm hoping to get hooked up with Pat for more trips, and I'm really excited to be able to offer my perspective to a professional in the field - he values my info and layman knowledge of the local systems, and I'm stoked on that.   

If we don't start getting some rain things are going to be weird...  But the irony is that all of these salmon have spawned, and if we can get about 30 to 45 more days of mellow flow with a few recharging rains then there should be a great chance for lots of young of the year salmon making their way downstream in the coming months.  Pray for rain in mellow spurts...

I guess I neglected to mention:  there were lots of salmon swimming around randomly as well as on redds, but it seems they're all spawned out, so there were actually more fish just looking worn out than anything else.  Probably saw 5 to 7 dozen large spawners, a dozen carcasses, and dozens of redds - most of those in two excellent complexes in swift runs.

 

 

 

Awesome Report!  I cant believe you saw a sturgeon in there!  I guess that sturgeon is going to eat well on all those eggs and carcasses.   

Thanks for the great report and pictures Eric.

Very cool....... Awesome report....

Amazing conditions, beautiful fish, natural beauty and a Sturgeon, wow! 

Very cool, that was a great opportunity. Hopefully it will rain soon and fill her up with steel...

Beautiful report,

wow, that was an amazing trip Eric. Thank you so much for bringing us along. Those pics are all pretty badass, loving the hog salmon & sturgeon, real wildlife fo' sho'!

Fun stuff Eric. Thanks for sharing this adventure.

Way cool pics, love seeing the sturgeon. This lack of rain is freakin killing me, I have to look at my drift boat sitting there begging me to take him out to fish. I might be making a trip up to Oregon just to get rid of this itch....and it's a bad one.

Love it man, and a sturgeon...