It’s been raining off and on for the past week, not torrential downpours or anything, just enough to get and keep everything wet. It hasn’t exactly been warm and it’s been windy as well. All you can do is be ready to go when there is a window of clear skies between storms and get out there.
It hasn’t rained enough to make the bike trails muddy, but it’s always a good idea to wait a half day or so, at least, before riding after a rain storm; riding on wet trails really chews them up. They still aren’t completely dry from the long, wet winter and spring. One day was actually pretty nice; it rained a couple days, then dried out overnight and early in the day and was good to go later in the afternoon.
The past few days, it hasn’t been raining very hard, but constant light rain and drizzle off and on. When it’s like this, you have to look for a couple hour break in between storm cells and get out there. It was raining an hour before this photo was taken and it was raining an hour after it was taken.
You may notice in the first photo there are no fenders on the bike, a week of rainy weather and the fenders are back on, as they are in the second picture.
Rain doesn’t affect the kayak fishing very much, everybody is pretty much stocked up on GoreTex around here. If you have the right gear, rain won’t stop you from fishing, but high winds will. The Gorge is world famous for it’s high winds; awesome for kiteboarders and sailboarders, not a great thing for kayak fishermen. Passing storm fronts almost always are accompanied by high winds, between fronts you can get out and do some fishing. That’s what we did today at Tunnel Lake in Skamania County, WA. Tunnel Lake is somewhat sheltered from the wind, but it’s right next to the Columbia River, anything over 10MPH is going to make it tough to fish, so hitting it early in the morning is the way to go.
Pretty spectacular sunrise between storm fronts. “Red skies in the morning, sailors take warning”.
Fishing for chunky rainbow trout was pretty darn good.
Like I mentioned, it was between storms and it wasn’t long before another storm front came barreling down the Columbia River Gorge from the west. It started to get windy and the rain began to fall. Time to head for home.
Here’s a YouTube video of some of todays kayak fishing action:
Going to try and hit it again tomorrow morning.