Senior Project Post #2

I'm supposed to tell a story about a moment from the week but we had a multitude of fun moments occur this week. Thursday morning we woke up at 6 and met at Braden's before driving all the way out to the Coast Range to fish the Nehalem River. We drove through the rain and sung along to the lovely tunes of Olivia Rodrigo, before arriving at a spot that was pretty incredible. The river was split into lots of different holes and eddys which seemed perfect for big fish, and it looked like the rain might hold off for a while. That, it turns out, was not the case. Within twenty minutes, it had started to pour down on us, and we had all thought "oh, if we need raincoats we can just walk back up to the car and get them," so the first three minutes of rain were pretty detrimental to the dryness of the group. Then, it started to thunder. And not feeling like standing in the middle of the river holding a metal pole in a thunderstorm was a perfect situation to be in, we all went and took a thirty minute break in Kellen's car. Eventually the storm passed and we got back to fishing, but as we waded more we found that all of the rocks at this spot were covered in very slick algae like vegetation. Which I then slipped on. Three times. And ended up with water inside my waders twice and got both changes of clothes I had with me wet. So that was lovely. And cold. After about four hours of fishing and only catching what looked like tiny steelhead (about the same size as the smaller fish in my last post), we got a text from Braden's dad that rendered the last four hours of our lives somewhat useless. Transcript of the text: Jason: If you're catching steelhead smelt, there aren't any other big fish nearby. The smelt make sure to live away from bigger fish. Braden: Oh. I'm going to say this is what I learned this week; if you're catching steelhead smelt, move. In terms of accomplishing goals, we were able to catch fish and have fun fishing places we had never fished before. (We also fished the lower Willamente for bass and Braden caught a crappie) However, we are still trying to find a way to get involved with conservation efforts or doing something meaninful beyond fishing. Unfortunately, when we looked at volunteer opportunities through ODFW, we weren't able to find anything that worked with our project as it all involved becoming an RV Volounteer Host for a specific location. I don't have any questions right now, other then how everyone in my CnC is doing? I told them I'd shout them out in my blog posts, so Hi Kym, Owen, Mike, Kira and Dylan. (The rest of you will get one too. Don't worry, Elizabeth.) Here's a photo of me with the smallmouth bass I caught at Burnside Park in West Linn.

And here's a selfie of Kellen and I avoiding being struck by lightning.

You can see the fear on my face. Til next week.