Thursday - Yesterday ended with a ship going by about 11:30 p.m., and today started with a barge going by when we looked out about 7:30 a.m., but we didn't see anymore until about 2:00 p.m. Joe thinks they may have to wait until the tide is in before they can navigate through here. And we could see it was low tide because the steps were completely out of the water.
The fishing here is quite a process, and we got to watch this morning. One guy in a green kayak hauls the line out, which has two brickbats on it for weight. He drops it 200-300 feet from shore. The line is braided line and breaks off it a fish hits, so they lose the 2 bricks. Another lady uses sand for weight, and hers somehow releases the sand if a fish hits. They are using lures, and spray some kind of anti-human scent on it, and use bobbers. The lady's line was set up with three hooks, but I think the others only had one.
cloudy and morning mist
he trails the line along behind him, with the weight sitting in the kayak
Here is the sand process
She has 3 bobbers - one for each hook set-up
This one guy seems to be the main kayaker, but there are other kayaks here too. So everyone is all set up and ready to fish now.
Joe was ready to take a little drive, to the General Store back in Cathlamet to get his daily soda. And we drove across the bridge to Puget Island, which was larger and more heavily populated than we expected, although it wasn't crowded.
We found a beach, with lots of driftwood (I didn't take any). There was a guy fishing here, and he said he had caught a northern pikeminnow. I found out later what that was.
We could see Oregon across the water.
And some kind of lumber mill or wood processing plant on the Oregon shore.
As we continued through the area, we spotted 3 deer eating apples off the tree in someone's front yard.
And a house with so many flowers on the porch that it would keep even Dixie busy. There are lots of flowers in this part of the country -- everyone has flowers in their yards, hanging pots on their porches, and hanging baskets in the towns. It's very nice.
As we got back around to the bridge, Joe spotted an osprey nest with a couple birds in it, and one standing guard.
We saw lots of cattle, some horses, an alpaca, goats, sheep and two sheep badly in need of a haircut.
There's a car ferry that goes across from the island to mainland Oregon, so we found that road, and the ferry was just coming back.
And our bridge
We got back to camp and had lunch, then the lady's fish bell rang and we all went out and watched her bring in her salmon. It was a Chinese fire drill -- something like Joe and I go through when we catch fish in the boat!
It weighed in about 19 lbs.
About 2:00 p.m., the ship traffic began again. The first one was carrying a huge load of logs going downriver. It was really close to our side, and Joe said he bet another ship was coming through. Sure enough, a barge was coming upriver, bearing to the other side.
I had a bucket-full of blackberries to deal with, so I commenced to bake a blackberry cobbler to take to Joy's tomorrow. Marilyn whipped up a blackberry crumble before breakfast this morning, so those are handled. We really don't have room to freeze any, even though Marilyn and Joe really like to pick them. We may be able to figure out how to use up our frozen food so we can take some home, but we will have to do some meal planning for that.
Then the largest ship yet came through! It filled my windshield. It was registered out of Nassau.
We had several more ships pass by during the rest of the afternoon and evening, and I took pictures of every single one.
The one above and the next one passed each other just down on the curve, that was pretty cool.
Here's another load of lumber.
This one was different, didn't quite figure it out.
And then a tug towing a barge of woodchips.
This tug was not towing or pushing, so we assume it was just going back for another barge.
We saw one more tug, just after dark, about 9:15, it didn't look like it had anything either but it was dark and hard to see.
During the afternoon, our neighbors continued their fishing -- or at least their poles were in the water, but no one caught anything else.
It warmed up into the 70s about noon and the sun came out, so I finally ventured down the steps and put my toes in the Columbia River!
Then I walked on down to the little beach at the end of the campground. It had sort of black sand, but I didn't get in the water. There was a fisherman there, fishing for squawfish, or northern pikeminnows. He explained that these fish eat the salmon fries so they are trying to get them out of the river. There is a bounty on them, and you can earn some money by catching them and turning them in. He said he had earned $4,000 last year turning in these bounty fish. I looked it up, and they pay $5/fish for the first 25, then $6 for up to 200. But it was interesting to learn about this fish and the program.
After dinner, it started getting too cool to sit out, so we got an early start playing cards and got 2 games in, which we split. Marilyn had shared her blackberry crumble with us before we came in, so we were well fed and had a good evening. We really enjoyed our time here and were amazed at the river traffic, both at the number of ships we saw, and at the variety and size of them. This was a good day.
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