Tuesday, October 04, 2011

The Watchers by the River

Driving west, there had seemed to be very darn little water in the Sol Duc River, and no fisher persons at the usual pull outs. So it seemed unlikely there would be salmon jumping at Salmon Cascades. But I had to go look, on my way home from the beach. Up the Sol Duc Road I went, through the beautiful forest, grey and dark; and yes, you could see watchers down by the river as you drove around the last curve, and the little parking area was full. Fish. We have fish.

Watchers at Salmon Cascades, October 2, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

These are the Sol Duc summer coho. They spawn a couple of river miles upstream. Sometimes a really big one would jump, and all the watchers would murmur or go "oooh". Sometimes one would jump a little to the right of the main flow, where you could see it wriggle and scramble up the thin water flowing down the rock instead of vanishing into the cascade; and the people would say "Go! Go! Go!", and clap their hands, and make pushing gestures in the air, adding their own intention to the fierce determined fishes.

No new photos of salmon in flight. If I concentrate on trying to get photos, I'm not watching any more, and once I have a good picture I think I am done and go home, instead of just being there. Here is where they were jumping:

Salmon Cascades, October 2, 2011 (Click for larger image.)
... (Click for larger image.)

Two years ago I spent a long long time on several occasions trying to get pictures of the coho at Salmon Cascades. Though it violates the one rule of this blog, that all the pictures should be new, here are a movie and my best jumping salmon photo, both from 2009.

October 18, 2009. Perfect Flow, a Salmon Movie
A Coho Salmon on October 18, 2009 (Click for larger image.)

1 comment:

Sky said...

Hi. Is there any place we can view the jumping salmon next year without hiking? Enjoying checking out your blog and photos of the last few months. We were on the peninsula in Sept, I think, but only there for the day. We should have packed a bag so we could have gone over to Rialto. Hope you are well and happy. You seem to be on- the-go as much as ever! :)