We picked our next river and headed out, would have preferred to continue north but we were only planning on a quick 5 day run around, and the first area was a 12 hour drive. Headed a little ways south and parked at the confluence of the rivers. Launched and noticed the rivers are certainly all rock and very little sand or gravel was present. This can mean trouble.
Headed up a smaller river and only made it a kilometer. Simply too shallow with too many boulders, so cut a 180 and sent the firefish back down stream. Cut into the larger of the rivers and drove for a while. Unfortunately the only places to hike were farmers fields, as the banks everywhere else are closer to cliffs and slides that had caved away over time. Drove down 45 minutes and checked a couple areas, but the Bush was much to dense to see more than 50 yards at most times. After getting hit in the face with willow boughs for a while we headed back to the boat. Checked the shoreline adjacent to the farm fields and seen a virtual highway of deer tracks going for the easy feed. Deer were not open so we moved on, and of course seen a mix of Mule and white tails hanging out having a good time.
45 minutes down river we turned around for the trip home, and got there just before dark.
Ran it again the opposite way the next morning heading towards yet another river branch upstream. Seen a cow and calf elk leaving their feeding ground from the farmers field on one side of the river. Appeared as though they simply walk across the expanse of the river, being as its so shallow.
Seen a couple boats come from upriver direction the day of arrival, so we felt it would be alright. We were wrong! A couple KM up river we were jumping back and forth trying to follow the channel that was 1.5’ deep, the rest of the river was 0-6” most places, with rocks all over the area.
This worked well until we hit a smaller section of river, where rocks literally encompassed the entire width. After going another .5km we realized that I was aiming to bounce over ‘the smooth rocks’ and that was a sign to turn around in the closest area around a foot deep. Cut a nut and bounced our way back down, and then hit the fog. I’ll tell you in advance, if you’re going through the fog in a jet boat.. pull over. Not a good plan! But us being partial rednecks we were on full send and too excited to be in a new area. Ended up bouncing on rocks since I couldn’t see them far enough off, and skimming 2 gravel bars on the way down. This was following the GPS line halfway close, but it was just too tough to see everything. On the way back we noticed the trailers parked in a farmers boat launch we hadn’t seen on the way up, explaining the boats coming down. Great trap they set up!
Had breakfast and lunch on the river and packed up for the next place. The boat launch was also exciting, since it involved placing the trailer in a hole, and bouncing the boat over a shallow bar, or being on plane (fast enough so there’s only a few inches of boat in the water) to get over the shallow rocky portion and bumping it up onto the trailer. After the day we had it was closer to a piece of cake in comparison.
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