Canoeing East End Park...

Morgan and I made a trip yesterday to East End Park in Kingwood. It's a 15 minute drive from his house to this park on a fork of the San Jacinto River leading into Lake Houston. It's the last, biggest remaining Big Thicket Ecosystem type forest in Harris County. There are very nice trails that allowed us to make use of the canoe dolly to get to a launch point.  

It was a great paddle but we caught no fish. I guess you could count the net fulls of big hand sized shad that Morgan caught in a cast net. Texas Parks and Wildlife list fishing as fair to good and I quote the web site "in areas when habitat can be found." It lists blue cat as good fishing which I would guess that's what is eating those big old shad. By all reports there seems to be a decent white bass run up the river in spring time. The area we fished was mostly sand flats with a few islands.  

You drive down Kingwood Drive, enter the park and it's a wilderness with ducks, birds, deer and not too many people. We saw quite a few mallards pictured here, hear wood ducks and saw a variety of shore birds and a couple of deer in their red summer coats. There is a trail called Alligator Alley. Water is muddy. Quite of few boats of all sorts and jet skis passed running fast in the deeper channel on the way up river to a popular swimming sandbar.   

Look in the trees carefully and you see a washed up stranded boat. 

Little creek, quite deep we paddled up. 

More mallards. 

As I say our casting arms got good exercise and the pushing of the canoe dolly counted as my cardio. The morning spent with my son counted as my happy place. I live by a great lake but this little 150 acre park with the bustle of the city near by was a great Saturday morning get away.