Trip report: July 4th 2019 Cotton Bayou/Cotton Lake from Hugo Point Pop-up
Participants (4): Amy McGee, D. Portz, Fran Wilcox, Natalie Wiest.
Trip Leader: David Portz
Variably cloudy, no rain.
Temp in high 80’s
Wind: Approx. 10 mph wind sporadically
Report
Points south and east of the Hugo Point put-in (near Cove TX) are another great ‘go-to’ spot for some beautiful scenery and birding. Admittedly there’s some complexity to the braided bayous. Maps and GPS are handy when finding your way among large stands of cane and more established islands in this wetlands area. Additionally, tidal currents may fight you a bit during some part of a trip, and winds have sufficient fetch to produce choppy water on Cotton Lake.
On this 4th of July outing, we had four kayakers (one sit-on-top, two long plastics and one rotomolded pink, black and purple kayak alarmingly named “Miss Piggy”).
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| Memorial |
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The Cove Point put-in has two cement boat ramps, ample parking, walking paths, a picnic table, an observation platform and restroom facilities. It’s a frequent launch site for motorized boaters. At present it also has crosses memorializing four persons killed in a June 25th accident nearby, brought about by a drunken man in his brand-new ski-boat. The crosses were decorated with fishing lures, beer cans and hats from a local whiskey bar. Link: ABC13.com
We launched at 9:15.
It’s nice to paddle carried along by a mild current with the breeze at your back, which is what we had every once in a while at the start of the voyage.
Paddling southeast from the boat ramps we were shielded on the east from Old River Lake by a cane-rush island until reaching the entrance of Cotton Bayou. Just a short ways west into Cotton Bayou is a cement tower - a two-story block house - attached to the cement ramp and cement levee – perhaps once a road or water containment system. A map shows it starting west of Cove Point, traversing the scrubby wetlands, then inland of Old River Lake, Old River and Old River Cutoff – going all the way to the Trinity River below the Wallisville Dam, many miles southeast of where we paddled. I’m going to call this structure the “Levee” here – it’s marked on my map as a road though it was built to allow gaps permitting passage of most significant water channels. Perhaps it once had bridges.
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| Landing on levee |
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Italiante tower |
At the tower we poked through a gap in the scrubby growth to follow a narrow channel along this Levee for maybe a half a mile. Expecting alligators, we found only thousands of Eastern lubber grasshopper (Romalea guttata) in the foliage and on the concrete surfaces. They were feeling randy, some of them – they have to get cracking because they’re ‘annuals’ - North America’s largest grasshopper. From the time they hatch, they are toxic to predators, but get worse into their maturity, like some folks we know. If you handle them they emit foul-smelling mist like spray, also toxic, and they hiss. The colorful males are 2 ½ to 3 inches long; apparently the females can grow to 5 inches long because they must accommodate their eggs.
Ah, and the flowers. We did not paddle fast but paused and examined, photographed, groupings of blooms on the borders of the channels. There were white and a few pink Swamp morning-glories (Ipomoea aquatica Forssk), white swamp-lilies with blooms trailing like fire-works streamers (Crinum americanum), orange ‘trumpet flowers’ on Trumpet creeper (AKA Trumpet vine, Cow itch vine, Hummingbird vine (Campsis radicans), blooms on a wetlands Palo Verde shrubs (perhaps not the Parkinsonia aculeata one finds in deserts, wild azalea (?), Swamp rosemallow (Hibiscus grandiflorus), and inevitably, purple blooms of invasive water hyacinth.
We molested some water-side ‘sensitive plants’ (AKA Littleleaf Sensitive Briar, Little-leaf Mimosa, Mimosa microphylla Dryand) which have compound leaves on a central stem which fold up against one another when touched, and also at night. The flowers are small pink balls and grow along the stem at varying intervals, also described in the scholarly work “Horton Hears a Who”.
Light cloud-cover for most of the paddle created this glowing diffused light which made the bordering plants, trees and flowers look very lush.
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Not on HL&P Causeway
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We emerged from the Levee-side channels into Red’s Bayou and picked up our pace among more cane-growth islands to reach Cotton Lake. We noticed ourselves hungry. There is no obvious landing spot on the borders of the lake which is not on private property. One alternative would be to paddle entirely across Cotton Lake to reach another segment of Cotton Bayou, then paddle upstream eastwards to land at a set of wooden piers - probably private property also. We didn’t do this because we didn’t know about it yet - we paddled over there later. So I’ll tell you what we absolutely didn’t do. Because what we didn’t do is not permitted. What we didn’t do is land on the very substantial rock causeway that separates Cotton Lake from HL&P Lake. HL&P Lake is adjunct to a power generating plant, and trespassing on HL&P Lake or on at the plant itself or on the causeway is strictly forbidden - signs are posted - violators will be persecuted.
There is a lot of driftwood piled up against the tumbled rocks of the causeway, and large fish are jumping adjacent at all times. One, if one sat there, would see palatial homes lining the far bank of Cotton Lake - trespassers would be violated over there too.
Lunch was delicious. Since it was the Fourth of July, the trip leader trotted out from one of his hatches (the “Pie-Hole”) a now-warm red-white-and-blue fruit pie, cherries apples and blueberries. Everyone seemed to swiftly be able to produce forks and plastic landing places for a slice of pie.
Pie, eaten in locales where humans and pies are verboten, can be quite delicious.
After we did not stop on the rocks of the causeway, we paddled across the very shallow Cotton Lake (fish jumping, speedboats speeding through channels known only to them) to the continuation of Cotton Bayou on the east. We paddled up past where it fractures a couple times, to the juncture of Cotton Bayou and Gully Bayou, then turned around. This stretch of Bayou was 20 to 30 feet wide, with mullet jumping twice, thrice, four times. Every once in a while a Gar was vigorously astonished by one of our boats. Again the waterside foliage was so lush we could’ve been in Ecuador. The Coveans seem to be growing plus-size Great Blue Herons here, the same can be said for the well-fed Red-Winged Blackbirds we saw perched among the cane.
Emerging again from Cotton Bayou we eschewed a drive-by-paddle of the palatial homes, plantation houses really, with broad expanses of lawns, every square inch cut by someone. Instead we beat straight across Cotton Lake for a mound of the greenest trees where we thought Cotton Bayou would take up again. This was not a bad guess, but Cotton Bayou is a bit farther south of that mound of greenery. What you first encounter are fake Cotton Bayou channels - Cotton Bayou imposters. If you’re lucky you can see a powerboat swaggeringly tracing the channel, then discover some invisible sticks lazily marking the route, and follow those. When you reach the tower again you know you can turn left and almost inevitably reach the Cove Point takeout.
I should note that on the return trip paddling in the bayous we discovered the current and the wind that we hadn’t noticed before. The sun had come out from the clouds and was moistening our surfaces. Going slowly due to these factors we discovered that the bowl-shaped nests in tree branches four feet above the water were made by fussy Phoebes, who helped us by saying their names for us.
So - getting to the pull-out was a hard pull.
Even so, I noticed a bit of regret among our group to be landing at our starting point at about 3:30. Plenty of the other pleasure boaters had debarked and disappeared with their trailers.
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| GPS route & mileage |
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I said first off above this was a ‘go-to spot’. Given that a map is needed to find your way back to the takeout, I venture to say it is more of a “go-to spot” than a “point of departure”. But what a wonderful place to be stranded in! Our day was very full, but one can imagine times of the year when, at dawn or dusk, phenomenal flocks of bird life are thronging the place. I was very glad we had Natalie Wiest along on this day’s trip to identify, or at least speculate on, the classification of the many flowers, plants, insects and birds we witnessed. The speculation itself is part of the fun – the group of us collaboratively reaching the best guess or right answer.
Photos taken of the trip accessible on the HCC site here.