Volunteer April 30, Gilbert River (Sauvie Island) Sturgeon

I'll post up my pics from the Fuji later tonight or tomorrow as well as email you what I got Lingbanger , and let's not forget our great leader Lingbanger who put it all together without pulling out all his hair, we help but without you there's no events to help with. 

It was a great time Lingbanger.  It was a little controlled chaos at the beginning getting everyone on the kayaks but once everyone was on the water it went off without a hitch (except for one swimmer, which was a great story he's going to share for quite some time I think).  I could hear all of the hooting and hollering up around the river bend from where I was on shore and I saw all the smiling faces and heard all the fish tales when we got them off the water later, I know that everyone else had a great day as well.  It wasn't just the vets who were smiling ear to ear either.  I will definitely be back to help out again!

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Adding a +1 to the other comments is way underselling Saturday's HOW event on the Gilbert River.  Some fun logistics to work out, but Anthony, Dino, the many volunteers, and most of all the vets and their families made it a wonderful day to enjoy an amazing location.  I've been to a number of HOW events the past few years, and this one definitely ranks up there with the best of them!!!  A couple highlights for me...

* Talking with a couple of awesome guys about their day and how their friends were incredulous to hear that they were going sturgeon fishing ... in kayaks!  Both had opportunities for sleigh rides and gave me huge smiles and big thumbs up at the end of the day.

* Assisting one of our vets - TJ - while he fought and landed a crazy sturgeon.  Early in the battle, his line got wrapped around one of the anchor lines we had set out.  He kept tension on his line, while I cleared the anchor obstruction, but in the process, he slid off the kayak.  NO problem there - TJ instinctively righted himself in the water, still keeping tension on the sturgeon, hands his fishing pole off to me, bounces back into the kayak, grabs the pole back, and proceeds to land a sturgeon that was ready to be done with crazy situation!

One more...  the food, as usual, was wonderful!

Awesome day!

-Sam

A couple pics of "The Epic Launch!"