My Own River Monsters Experience

[bergermaister]

So we went up the Willamette River today - never gone this way before, through downtown Portland and as far up as we could go basically. Kind of a weird day where the sun never came and we never went into the water. Well, shortly into our trip we had a close encounter so to speak.

When I first pulled up on this thing I was thinking "Holy shit - is that an alligator?" because it was sort of laying over on it's side and I could see what looked like scales and the fin looked like a small front leg sticking up. When we got a bit closer I realized it was a sturgeon - A REALLY FREAKIN BIG STURGEON!





I don't know if these pictures do it justice but I would guess that corpse was around 8ft long or more and had to weigh a couple hundred. Was probably close to 2ft in diameter. It was a lot bigger than me! Was completely intact but rotting and suddenly the girls were all grossed out and screaming they were going to throw up so we had to back away pretty quickly. Still, kinda wild seeing that thing out floating down the middle of the river...

[bergermaister]

End of the line for this stretch of river - going up that close to the falls was pretty cool though. Talk about a fast moving current!

[cab13367]

Holy hell Berg, that thing is scary! We were on the Willy as well down by Newberg and you're right, never did see the sun. But we got in the water. Six of us, two sets each. On at 9:00, off at 2:00. I actually put on my shorty on my second run. Water temp was 67 and air temp was not much higher.

[moombadaze]

Thanks for sharing, those sturgeon are something else

[wolfeman131]

Sometimes, it's better to NOT know what you're swimming with! Yikes!

Cool pics of the falls.

[89PROSTAR]

We were on the Willamette as well. Canby area...I would rather not know whats under that water.

[rdlangston13]

Those falls look awesome! Wish we had some cool scenery like that around here