River Run

The itch has been scratched.

I’ve been busy with cabin work this past week, but needed a break to do something just for me. It was time to breakout the cataraft and float the river. 

This annual trip is part exercise, part inner peace, and part salvage run. Finding a lost “treasure” is just icing on the cake. 

One thing I like about floating the river in May is I usually have the river to myself. That will change in a hurry once the salmon arrive. 

I do equal parts floating and walking on gravel bars. Gravel bars are good places to find things and to see salmon carcasses from last year’s run. 

The river is exceptionally clear this time of year which makes for better picking. In about a foot of water I found this. It’s a perfectly cleaved off skeg from a 50hp outboard motor. A skeg is a stabilizing keel under a prop that helps maintain a straight course for the boat. This unlucky boater had an expensive repair to make things right again. 

Here’s a $5 dollar bill just waiting for me to find (actual price at Cabela’s is $7.99). 

Every river float there’s something that makes me go “hmmm”. Behind an island I came across a hat hanging 6 feet up on a tree branch. At first I thought someone must have hung it up there because it looked too perfect. However, when I retrieved the hat it was obvious it had been floating in the river and got caught on a branch during a high tide cycle. It was absolutely plastered with glacier silt and mud.

After a three hour float, here is my total haul. Not a bad day at all. 

Long time readers of the blog will notice that I didn’t find the Holy Grail of river salvaging…an anchor. It’s been a couple years since I last found one and it’s not because there aren’t in the river. It’s my timing that is off. I float in the spring and a small group of fall duck hunters have been finding them before me. How I know this is because a few of the hunters are my friends and they’ve sent photos of found anchors.

Oh well, I’ll always do a spring river run. But, maybe I’ll have to add a fall run too…