South Fork Walla Walla Float

Ring Ring Ring .. 8am Sunday and Grant is calling to get me out of bed. We had planned to float the South Fork (and upper main stem) of the Walla Walla that day but I wasn't quite ready to start the day. After a quick breakfast I loaded up two new Outfitter X9 Pontoon boats that were on loan from Papa Coach. I felt bad (only slightly) that I was going to use his new pontoon boats before he had even taken them out of the box. But I figured someone should test them out to make sure they were safe for family use!

Note: I have never been in a pontoon boat and only been in a drift boat once. All this is very new to me.

Setting up the Outfitter X9 (purchased from Costco) was pretty straightforward. No major hitches in putting the boats together and we were fortunate to have the "help" of Grant's three young children. As Grant's wife put it "sometimes putting together things it is like an octopus in the fray". I suppose sometimes it is possible to have too much help.

For our first float we headed to Harris Park on the South fork of the Walla Walla and planned to float to Milton Freewater -- about 13-15 miles. It was about noon by the time we got ready and had the boats in the water.

Man what a blast! I have to say the pontoon boats are fun and very stable. Main problem was learning how to control the boats. In normal boat rowing you row "backwards" and pull the boat along. In the pontoon boats you are facing forward and mainly use the oars to steer..which is backwards of a normal rowboat. Lets just say it took a while to get used to the steering and movement of the boat.

We had planned to fish along the way but only stopped twice to fish. The South Fork was pretty low, brushy, and had numerous logs across the river. Because of all the obstacles we left our rods safely in their cases. Since it turned out to be a pain to re-rig every time we didn't fish much. However there appeared to be some pretty good pools between Harris Park down past the fish hatchery.

Speaking of fish hatchery one of the highlights of the day was spotting four salmon along the float. Very cool to see these huge fish in the small river. One of the them swam past the boats half out of the water! Amazing the speed and power of these huge fish.

I would divide the float into three parts. First third was a blast: combination of white water rafting, exploration and mastery of the boats. River had enough water that there wasn't much problem getting around. The middle third of the river pretty much sucked. We both lost an "oar stopper" from an oar and ended up being forced to use one oar as a paddle. Plus the river got much more shallow with more down trees and obstacles in the water. We ended up pulling the boats around many obstructions in the water. Really became a pain. Last third of the trip was pretty fun. The river more or less straightened out and the float became pretty easy. Plus we just resigned ourselves to go with the "flow" and let the river push us around. This seemed the easiest way to deal with only having one paddle.

The float took about 6 hours which was probably a bit too long for our first pontoon adventure. Next time we will probably put in at Harris Park and float just past the fish hatchery..hopefully this way we will get in some fishing time.

I'll post my thoughts on the Costco Outfitter X9 later this week.