2015-02-15 Day Trip

No pictures this time for what turned out to be what felt like a very short day trip.
When you're used to staying out at least 1 night and many times more than 1 night, just going out for the day seems like a short trip.

In any case, the weather was nice, which is rare for February, so I decided to spend the day on the water.

I pulled out in the dark at about 6:45 AM, but it got light soon after.
We are gaining about 5 minutes or so of daylight each day now, which is great.

I ran right over into Clover Pass and prepped and then dropped my 3 shrimp pots.
I usually drop them at one specific waypoint that I have marked near Salmon Falls Resort, but this time I decided to move them a little North of there, nearer to Grant Island.

After dropping the pots I just poked around in the area and tried some bottom fishing.
I only had 2 bottom fishing rigs on board and managed to lose one of them within the first 10 minutes.  Must have been some sharp rocks down there because I didn't even reef on the rod that much when it separated.

I took a slow run down into Long Arm, which is near the entry to the Naha.
It's an area that I have not been into for many years and I wanted to see what was down there.
Up at the head of the arm there was a real nice cabin/home, with 3 or 4 people moving around the area.  They had 2 skiffs anchored out front, and a real nice outhouse up on the hill behind the cabin.
Looked like the man of the house was cutting up fire wood on the beach near the cabin.

Pulled the pots about 2 PM, getting only a couple dozen shrimp.
This time of year there are a lot of "eggers," large females laden with eggs.
Some people eat the eggs, but I do not.

Pot puller is not working well - I had to pull the last 75' or so by hand.
Will have to look into that.

Back in the stall about 4:30 PM, right before dark.
Logged about 45 nm on this trip.

2015-01-30 Naha Devastation

It's been a long dry spell without a boat trip.
I was starting to feel withdrawal symptoms.
I actually went out in late November to Marguerite Bay but my camera wasn't working and so I had no usable pictures, so I did not update my 2014 blog for that trip.
Thanks to my friend Len for diagnosing the problem with the camera, over the phone no less.

I started out 2015 with a trip to the Naha, of course.
There was an article on the Sitnews website a month or so ago relating that a big windstorm had blown some trees down and damaged the ramp.  The article said that it was damaged so badly that they had to pull it out.  And furthermore they had no funding and no time to repair or replace it.

I was prepared for no ramp.
After all how hard can it be to take the raft the few yards to shore from the float?
But I was not at all prepared for the devastation that I saw in the area.

It sure looked strange to see the float not connected to shore.

Of course I wasn't there when the big one hit but I suspect it was the one that took out the ramp and also crunched the bull rail on the dock.

Just to the left of where the ramp used to go up to shore there is a small tree covered knoll.  It's still covered in trees, but they were all blown down.  Looks like a bomb went off.

I got my hiking gear together, put the raft in the water and paddled the short distance to shore with the intention of getting as far up the trail as I could before blow downs or lack of daylight stopped me.

The trail was a challenge.  See the above two pictures.  In many cases the boardwalk and/or the stairs, or a small bridge, were completely wiped out.  Sometimes I could work my way around them easily, and other times, not so much.

Check out this one that went down.  It was a fairly young and healthy tree, not an old rotten one.  I can imagine the sounds of that storm.  It must have been ear splitting.

I went up the trail for a couple of hours but had to deal with many blow downs and take numerous detours.

The only "critters" I saw on this hike were the squirrels.  You can hear them chattering through the trees frequently.  I'd see them occasionally but they usually don't sit still long enough for a good shot.

They were busy pulling down pine cones into piles, and then chewing the seeds out of them leaving empty husks.

Here's what's left after the squirrels get through with them.  All the good stuff is gone, nothing left but husk.

There's one of the little guys working hard on a pine cone.

Even with the damage it's still a beautiful place to visit.