Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Incredible winter paddle on DeGray Lake, Hot Spring/Clark County Arkansas December 13th, 2011



DeGray Lake is located near the town of Arkadelphia, Arkansas about an hour south of Little Rock and about 60 miles north of the Texas/Arkansas border.  I was on a kayak fishing chat room and was told that DeGray has Alligators, however, I did not see any on this trip.

This lake is absolutely incredible!  It is speckled with little rock islands covered with various trees, many of the conifer variety, which, when I see these pine like trees, always reminds me of either northern Wisconsin or Colorado.
I did a little over 5 miles, setting off from the boat ramp at the state park and paddling around one of the larger islands and then crossing the channel to go around one of the smaller, rocky islands.  This time of year you can see a lot of different variety of ducks.  I hear that this lake is also known for its bald eagle winter population....I did not see any, but I am sure they are out there.  On the paddle back to shore, I heard the call of a wipper-will, which really gave the whole trip a nice effect...there was no one out on the lake, and it was incredibly calm, so the whole trip had a nice "zen-like" effect (which is what I really needed)

I would like to come back when it warms up and camp on one of the islands with the kayak.  I will be looking into what the exact regulations are in regards to that.
If you are down south, you owe it to yourself to explore this lake with a kayak or canoe

Paddle ON!

Mike

DeGray Lake Arkansas- excellent winter kayak trip


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