Sunday afternoon I had about two hours before sunset to explore a section of the San Gabriel river at the low water bridge at CR100 and Highway 29 a.k.a Mankin's Crossing. I've always gone upriver with much success and the paddling and wading is always great.
This time, I decided to explore the area downriver from the crossing. The first 150 to 200 yards were pretty much done walking as the water is basically too low in spots to paddle. What I did not like about the wade and also sections later is that the limestone riverbed has far too many gulleys or channels cut into it that make walking very difficult.
Eventually, I got to some sections that I could paddle but within short distance would come up to either some riffles or rapids which forced me to dismount. This repeated a few times. While this section of the river has some pretty areas, locating fish was difficult due to the water being a little muddy from recent rains though I have no doubt there are fish in there.
I eventually ended about a mile downstream where there was a decent waterfall leading to a narrow tree lined section then down to another waterfall where I stopped and started making the trek back.
I believe that even though it may take a while, the whole trek could have been made wading since the deepest sections I came across were no deeper than about 3 or 4 feet with most sections being less than 2 feet deep.
I think I'll stick to the large pools and flats found upstream.
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