Trip Report: Champion Lake, October 4, 2024
As a warmup to the club’s 60th anniversary celebration I offered two local trips, particularly so my longtime friend John Diehl could get out on the water. I introduced John to kayaking in the 1970s, he introduced me to Houston paddling in the 1980s. John now lives in our native Pennsylvania and made this trip also for the 50th anniversary.
Champion Lake was first up on the locations. Fran Wilcox joined John and me. I had paddled Champion in September and noted it was quite low then; it was even lower this time.
The birds weren’t quite as spectacular on this trip as on the earlier, but there were still many wading birds taking advantage of the low water and exposed mud flats. I had a hard time trying to decide what this first bird is, and I believe it is a Wilson’s snipe:
A great egret also posed for me: 
Yellow legs, white ibis, kildeer and several others eluded my camera.
Here are our boats at the putin.
We started out heading northeast to the dam, going by the overflow station which as you can see is well above the current water level
John Styling in the canoe
Fran Under Way
John paddles past the fishing pier as we paddle to Caney Creek. Note how high the pier is out of the water, and the great egret is wading only ankle deep well out from shore
This is the entrance to the 13/14 channel from Caney Creek. It’s barely inches deep, we didn’t even try to enter.
The 15/18 channel is no better, and even shallower from this Caney Creek entrance.
After we turned around on Caney Creek we paddled west along the south shore. Here’s the 13/14 entrance from the south end. We paddled up into this area for a peaceful lunch among the cypress.
Paddling back to the #14 station from the south
One of the most unusual events of the trip was the hyper-activity of the fish. All three of us had boat strikes by fish, one of whom hit me in the face but thankfully I was able to bat it OUT of landing inside the boat. Fran and John had multiple incidents as well.
The only near fatality of the trip was this good sized gar that lept into John’s canoe. Poor guy shed some blood for his efforts. These fish are incredibly slippery, and stinky, and it was some time until John got him ejected and back into the lake waters.
Overall I estimate we paddled about 5 miles and it was a beautiful day to be out on the water.
Natalie Wiest
Trip Coordinator