Saturday 5 October 2019 Cuttagee Lake

It was a last minute decision last night that led us to have a lovely paddle today. With L away S/V offered to come over and load my boat onto the roof of their car however I woke up early enough to have some time to faff around and I managed to get the car and trailer turned round and my boat onto the wood trolley and out of the house (where it has been living lately while seat modifications are underway)  down two steps and from the trolley onto the kayak rack on the trailer. I was well chuffed :)  So instead of my fellow paddlers collecting me I collected them and we trundled down to the lake and were on the water at 8.20am

We followed 'boils' of fish along the shoreline. If you look carefully you can seen some fins sticking out of the water

And as usually happens, one of our crew is looking in the wrong direction and plaintively crying "where are the fish, where are the fish"

Striking out across little Cuttagee we do our best not to disturb a pair of swans and their 5 grey offspring (just to the right of the sign). It was to turn out to be a day of abundant bird life

Hopefully S will have a better pic  than these

Yes she has:) S has come through, camera charged and on the correct settings - Yeah.
The five cygnets, I hope some of them survive.

And a little further on, a pelican and egret share a small patch of flat shoreline

After turning out of Little Cuttagee we headed up to the end of the straight and went round Snake Island - just. The Lake has lost 20-30cm of water over winter, presumably through evaporation - how much will it lose over summer!!
Looking back

Down the lake we go, assisted by a light breeze at our backs

Going down along the northern shore

After stopping where the fisherman launches his boat, to unkink and to fiddle with my seat we decided to head up the creek and paddled on down the lake.

Shortly after turning into the creek we came across a group of Spoonbills, who obligingly stayed put for us.

Here are some of S's great pics

Lots more of the melaleuca has died off and further along some of the Spotted Gums are starting to look very stressed

The corner just before the entry to Back Lagoon was full of large and medium sized jelly fish ; which is interesting because Corunna on Wednesday was seething with tiny jelly fish of the same sort.

As soon as we were through the bend the jelly fish practically disappeared , with only the odd one sighted here or there on the rest of our journey upstream.

Jeez Louise - I hope S's pics turned out better. We were accompanied up quite a long section of the creek by a pair of Kingfishers - darting along in front of us crossing and re-crossing the creek.

 Enjoying the scenery

Or really concerned with how dry the bush is. Soon we won't be able to paddle beyond this point.

We pulled up on this pebbly beach for another leg stretch and the denumbing of various bits. Beyond here the water level was now very low and S&V pushed gamely on for another 150metres of so before finally running out of water.

Returning back down the creek

You can see algal blooms are starting to grow and the water wasn't as clear as when we last paddled the lake.

Back through jelly fish corner

Taking the 'inside' route around the island at the mouth of the creek

We paddled back up the lake, hugging the southern shore in an attempt to avoid the head on breeze passing at least 50 swans on the way and lots of skinny and unhappy looking kangaroos lying in the shade of the dead and dying melaleucas along the shoreline.

Rounding the corner into the Straight we met a kayaker nearly head on - a man with two kids. Unseen by S, the little boy at the back was trolling a fishing line out behind them and she paddled into the line. The bloke kept paddling and lucky for S the hook got caught in the bungee across the boat in front of her and not in her face or arm.

Eventually disintangling herself we paddled on and around into Little Cuttagee. Upon getting closer we could see movement at K&A's caravan and it was A having just returned from a paddle. We pulled up to say gidday and had a very pleasant chat. It takes A about 1 1/2 hours to paddle round the  main lake - 8.5+kms - no wonder we didn't see him. Interestingly he said that a couple of months ago Cuttagee had heaps of tiny jelly fish in it. I wonder why Cuttagee and Corunna are so out of sync?

After bidding A farewell  we paddled the remaining few hundred metres back to the car

Finishing up our paddle at 12.20pm

After dropping S&V and their boats off I tootled home and after washing the boat and letting it dry in the sun I managed to reverse the process and this time with a lot more efficiency and less effort, got the boat off the trailer rack and onto the wood trolley - this time strapping it on, so when it came to the steps it was an easy matter to lift the kayak with trolley attached up each step.

Trip Notes:

Lake closed
11.4kms
4hours (including approx 45mins of breaks)