Tough economy? Boyer Park seeing increase in use

Eleven-year-old Kennon Halen of Deary works his paddleboat against the wind, the line of his pole trailing behind him as he negotiates around the docks at Boyer Park last Thursday.

The sun is out and he has a can of worms open on the little deck of the boat.

“I want to catch a carp today,” he said, pointing out that his brother had already caught a gigantic one earlier.

Halen is one of several hundred people enjoying the fruits of Boyer Park this summer.

More people have visited the park this year than ever before, said park manager Dave Peterson.

Maria Holmes holds up the biggest squawfish caugtht at Boyer Park this year.

Visits to the park have shot up by almost 30 percent, he said.

With late July temperatures dabbling in the high 90s to low 100s, last weekend saw over 1,000 people coming down to swim, camp, catch crawdads, fish, or just sit under the big shady elms.

“We’ve had more people this year than we’ve ever had….I think a lot of people are sticking close to home,” Peterson said.

On a busy weekend such as the previous one, the park has been seeing crowds upward of 1,000 people.

“It’s the economy,” he said. “People are staying around here and not traveling around so far.”

Peterson said the park was maxed out last weekend on almost everything they had to offer.

Jamie Keller of Colfax had her feet chilling in the Snake River last Thursday afternoon and was tossing a ball to her collie Sammy while watching her husband and her daughter frolick in the river.

“It’s nice. We were worried it was going to rain, but it’s better now,” Keller said. They came down to Boyer for a mid-week camping trip. She said they spent most of Wednesday carousing around in the water.

Her eight-year-old daughter, Lyndi Kruse, had perfected her river diving techniques. She was only too glad to enthusiastically demonstrate them for the reporter by pitching forward in a swan dive, coming back up, and then keeling over backward to collapse back in the river.

“That’s compliments of swimming lessons in Colfax for two years,” Keller said wryly.

Further down the marina, the biggest squawfish caught at Boyer this season, a 25-incher, was getting it’s teeth snipped out by Maria Holmes, with the pike minnow sports reward program, part of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“I thought it was a big catfish ‘cause it was pulling the boat sideways,” said Brian Briggs of Wawawai road, who had just brought in the 6-pound female squawfish.

Holmes pulled out the jaws of the fish, put them in a souvenir plastic bag and handed it to Briggs.

“I could make a necklace out of them for you, honey,” said his wife Beth.

Boyer Marina is the leading site for the state’s northern pike minnow program, where fishermen are paid $4 for fish over 9 inches long, with the price increasing after they hit a certain catch load.

Last week, 2,174 squawfish were brought in, said Holmes. But now that the spawning season is over, the rates have dropped to between 250 and 350 a day, compared to 450 to 650 a few weeks ago.

Fishermen Rick Swanger and Terry Luding were just heading up from the river that Thursday afternoon, disappointed in the lull of the season.

“I was hoping to get up to 400, but I got stuck at 389,” Luding said, wearily lowering his icebox to the ground.

“Shoot, I was drifting last night and so I anchored, but shoot, I didn’t even get a keeper, just shorts,” Swanger said.

And it wasn’t just the coolness and fertility of the river drawing crowds.

A wild and thorny mountain of blackberry bushes flank Granite Road opposite the park.

With red, stained hands and wrists laced with thorn scratches, Larry Dale of Colfax was steadily picking through the bank of bushes. He had collected four gallons of berries in about two hours, he said, and it didn’t look like he was about to stop soon.

“This makes the best jam in the world, as far as I’m concerned,” Dale said. He plans on making pies, jams, and syrups with the berries and was working hard that day because with the heat, he said, the fruit will soon dry up.