Turtle, Albriton’s and White’s Bayous
Aug. 2nd, 2014
by Dave Kitson
Looking at the weather on Thursday night it seemed that there would be no paddling this weekend due to the 40% chance of thunderstorms, however, I checked the weather late Friday afternoon and discovered that there would be a break on Saturday with rain chances only 10% and a high temperature of only 91 so I posted a trip to the Turtle Bayou area. When I rechecked the weather on Saturday morning the forecast high had dropped to only 87 and as it turned ou,t I think it only reached 84! It turned out to be a fall day in August. There was a north wind which must have blown the water out into the Gulf since the water at the put-in was down a good 1.5’ to 2’.
John and Cindy Bartos, Gary Ables and I, set out upstream on Turtle Bayou and took the right into Albriton’s. As we paddled up the bayou we heard some thrashing around in the underbrush on the moderately steep bank. I thought it must be a dog until out popped a large (15” or 18”) soft shell turtle which immediately scooted into the water, too fast to take a picture. We made it to about 100 or 150 yards from the FM-61 Bridge before being stopped by a fallen tree, so we headed back to the park for a snack.
Next we headed up White’s Bayou. Given the shallow water I did not expect to go too far, however, it appears that the rain we have been having has washed out most of the fallen trees so we were able to go further than average in spite of the low water. Along the way Gary was able to spot a number of bream nests which are circular depressions in the sand about 10” in diameter. In many cases mom and dad were hanging around and could be seen in the clear water. Although we did not actually see them, we encountered 2, maybe 3 gators splashing into the water ahead of us. I think this is the first time I have seen gators on White's.
We ended up with a 7.4 mile trip of just over 4 hours. I loaded my photos to the website so check them out.
Dave's photo album can be viewed by clicking here.
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| The author, Dave Kitson |