Middle River & Little Mandeville Island

I've been paddling quite a bit lately but this is the first chance I've had to post in over a month. I love the Delta! You can paddle the same area every day and each time you're on the water it's a new experience.

After launching from Holland Riverside Marina, we spent some time paddling around Little Mandeville Island and Middle River today. Our intentions were to make it to Mildred Island but we were doing more chatting than paddling and soon realized we weren't making much progress and the currents would soon turn against us. We reversed course and headed back on Middle River where we discovered a shady sandy beach where we could stretch and cool off. It was in the mid 90's today and the water felt great!





This area has so many small islands and coves that offer endless exploration. We saw a couple of flocks of White Pelicans, Great Blue Heron, Snow egrets and lots of turtles. The beach we stopped on was alive with the chatter of what sounded like hundreds of birds.

We made our way back paddling the southern edge of Little Mandeville until we reached Rhode Island. There's a small entrance on the north shore of Rhode Island where you can enter the center of the submerged island. I've paddled here several times but today it was a rather unpleasant experience. I'm not sure if it was due to the low tide or not but there was a really bad oily smell in the air and the current leading into the island was literally black. I've never experienced anything like this before and wish I knew what was the cause. We quickly departed the inner island and made our way back to Old River where we rode the tide and small wind driven rollers home.

Another awesome day exploring my backyard!

I've been kayak fishing here the past couple of weeks and the fishing has been great. Last week I caught nine stripers in  under three hours! They were all shakers and released for another day but two or three were nearly 18 inches and all of them put up a great fight.







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