The Rain Game

Do you remember in the intro to this blog I described the Kenai river as fickle, unpredictable.... well, its at it again. After all mother nature dealt us this year, theres more. The Kenai is under flood warning. This graph of the water level at Cooper Landing tells the story. We've had some kind of northerly flow of a 'super system' settle in over the Kenai and not only has it rained for 3 days straight...its rained hard. 2 inches in Soldotna yesterday. The dramatic looking graph at the right is in Cooper Landing but look at the river as a hill, all of it has to run down hill and expect it all to peak here at mile 14 around the weekend or early next week....not the usual way to end the season where we just slowly wind down with every trip being a little slower, everyday the water a little lower and everyday the trees a little barer. I just hope that the upcoming high water event (don't even want to say the word flood) isn't so bad that it effects the spawn of our mature silvers in the river right now, we really need good spawning conditions, really.

So here at Mile 14 I spent yesterday doing battle with the rain. It was so heavy that it threatened to wash out the road and boat launch surface. We only have concrete below ordinary high water so above that we have a product called Geo-web that's supposed to contain and compact the gravel. I made sure that we had water draining away from the launch and road as much as possible. The pic below shows the hand shoveled drainage ditch that does a pretty darn good job . On the right you can see the geo-web product that actually is pretty slick and has worked well for the last 15 years, you just have to watch it and not let the downpour wash out all the fines that bind the gravel together.

This pic is the road to Rancho Deluxe. As you can see the water is standing, the ground saturated. Its a good thing old jet-dog is water dog.....she's getting plenty. So I guess we'll be optimistic here here and hope the rain stops, the water  level recedes and maybe we can even still eeek out a fishing trip or two before the silver run is over. I guess sometimes in life the things you love the most are the ones that drive you the goofiest....I guess thats me and the Kenai.