Found a few in the flood water this afternoon.

[FinsnFur]

I took me quite a while to find em but once I did it seems like they were all there lol. Shallow water with lots of grass.





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[Hawks Feather]

Does it give you a eerie feeling knowing you are fishing over an area that you normally walk?  It would me.

Jerry

[pitw]

Man it would be fun to fish an expanded area. 

[nastygunz]

 Duckhunting in flooded timber like that is a blast, pun intended!

[FinsnFur]

A view that few get to see, and it's VERY eerie Jerry.  Especially knowing that you are "literally" the only one out there and it's not like it's in a resort or anything. This is pretty much a dead end road leading to the river. I drove down the gravel road until I hit water. I shut the truck off there and threw the kayak in and kept going. There wasnt a sole around and for obvious reasons.
I told my brother to drive by and check on the truck once in a while if I was gone for a while. I didnt like it setting there like it was abandoned at the waters edge.

[Dave]

Yeah Id be pretty nervous about a tree coming down or who knows what.  The boogieman is probably in one of your pics if you look hard enough.
I will say that I'm jealous of the action though.

[Okanagan]

Love the pics.  Am surprised at the amount of current showing back in the woods. 

Some of my favorite kayaking is in flooded forests during high water.  Ours is usually in mid-June when snow melt maxes.  I've never tried fishing in the trees since we don't have any bass or pike kind of fish and trout don't seem to move into the timber.  On the best years the Fraser River will be up at least 20 feet vertically, so that I have to bend down to get under a railroad bridge. etc. and can paddle a quarter mile back in bottomland timber inside the river dike.  Before the dike system, the flood would cover miles of the flat valley.   

[FinsnFur]

That was why I took that little video clip Okanagan. The winds were 15 to 20 mph that day and it was a constant challenge to maintain control. There shouldnt have been ANY current back in there but because of those winds it was wicked.
I carry two poles, both rigged differently in pole holders behind me pointing up in the air so their out of the way. The wind had the water and me moving around so bad I had to keep them laying down between my legs to avoid getting tangled in the trees since I had minimal control.

[Okanagan]

Went to check on the Fraser River level this morning.  A fellow by the river said that it is a foot higher than yesterday.  It will be over low parts of a paved river side road by tomorrow, and will likely peak in a week or ten days.  A couple of pics.  The gravel road disappearing into the water is about 200 yards back from the Chilliwack River, nearly a mile above where it runs into the Fraser. 



Photo below was taken from a dike road at least half a mile from the Fraser River.

[Hawks Feather]

Time for you to go road fishing.     

Jerry

[JohnP]

Okanagan said:  "Went to check on the Fraser River level this morning."  Well I went to check on the water level in the San Pedro River this morning, crossed the widest part and didn't even get the soles of my shoes wet.  We have a very dry climate out here, even the rivers are dry. 

[Okanagan]

You got me curious, John, so I used Google earth to measure how wide the Fraser River is at the point where the second photo was taken, with the flooded trees.  The open river is nine tenths of a mile wide at that point. (Upstream a mile it is 1.1 miles wide, about 50 river miles upstream from salt water.) From the dike where I took the pic to the dike on the other side, with water all the way from one dike to another right now, is 1.7 miles wide. And it rose a foot in the past 24 hours.  Thousands of square miles of snow is melting in range after range of mountains right now. 

Someday we are going to figure out a way to efficiently move excess water that is running into the ocean to places like Arizona.  Maybe a big space siphon.

[FinsnFur]

Someday we are going to figure out a way to efficiently move excess water that is running into the ocean to places like Arizona.  Maybe a big space siphon.

I love it!!

By the way...your first pic up there Okanagan would be a perfect place to park and then hop in the kayak.

[Okanagan]

By the way...your first pic up there Okanagan would be a perfect place to park and then hop in the kayak.

That was my thought as well.  Great minds and all...   

I have launched there in years past a few times and paddled out the road slot to the Chilliwack River, down it a quarter mile and into the flooded timber. I  have paddled a mile down to the mouth and into the Fraser to fish salmon a few times.  Salmon season is closed so far this year.    There is about 18 inches of tidal rise and fall at this point, some 40-50 miles above salt water.

During our biggest flood several years ago I launched there with my two kayaks and a borrowed canoe and took three young women and their dad for a half day paddle in the flooded timber.  Long time friends since the girls were born, my wife and I are sort of unofficial god-parents to the girls.  We ate lunch floating amid tree tops in water 25-30 feet deep.  The girls considered it a big adventure and it was something few people have done out here. 

Re Tides in lower rivers, Lewis and Clark noted in their journal that they first noticed tidal rise and fall at Beacon Rock, which has to be at least 100 miles up the Columbia River from salt water.  After a year and a half of travel they knew they were near the Pacific.  (added:  Just checked Google earth and Beacon Rock is 118 straight line miles from the mouth, and with the huge bends in the Columbia it is a good 150 miles by river above salt water.)

[FinsnFur]

18"?
Wow, you could come back and end up carrying the yak the rest of the way.