Winter boat ride

I know its late February, but I needed an excuse to take the boat out. The Chinook Salmon are starting their spring run from the ocean to spawn. I spent the entire last week getting my poles and gear ready. I located some navigation maps for the local Willamette River, and purchased my season tags.
Travis and I had the boat loaded and were off to the river yesterday.
Thankfully the ramp wasn't too busy as the authorities may have a problem with Travis driving the boat or the truck. I managed to back the truck down, get in the boat, start it up, motor off the trailer, beach it, then pull the truck and trailer off the ramp and park it. Reverse that whole process to re-load the boat. FUN.

We headed up river and tried our luck at a couple of deep holes without any hits.
Since the bite was slow, we pulled anchor and motored into downtown Portland. The water was pretty rough when we got out in the open, but the boat handled it well. I just trimmed it up a little, it got on top of the rough water and flew at 45mph.
During our trip we came head to head with the "Portland Spirit" river cruise boat. It was entertaining to watch all the fishing boats yanking their anchors to clear the main channel, with the Portland Spirit blaring on its horn. "Giant Boat has right of way in deep river channel".
We made it back to our fishing spot and got settled in. I had two hits and Travis got one. It could have been a young Sturgeon, or Steelhead.
As we were watching our lines we heard what sounded like a whale blowing out. Right beside our boat was a Sea Lion. they come up river chasing down the salmon. He hung around for a bit, then disappeared. We couldn't get our cell phones out in time to get his picture.
All in all we had a good day out together, and the weather held to be halfway decent.