Copmanhurst Clarence River camping trip

Author: josh

Category: Trip Reports

Created on Tuesday, 23 February 2010 07:11

Written by Josh

When Tim Stacey from Clarence River Kayak Tours talked us into joining him on an over-nighter kayak camping trip into the upper reaches of the Clarence river at Copmanhurst, my first instinct was to look for something a little more exciting to do. I'm glad that high-seas deterred me from doing that though, because after having seen the place I can now understand why Tim was so keen to get us there. Joined by Holger, Troy and Doug (proprietor at Maclean Outdoors), we launched into one of the most picturesque stretches of the river mid afternoon. But it felt as if we'd only just gotten started fully appreciating our environment when we eased into our camping destination, which was less than a km away from launch.

For a moment we considered the possibility of moving on to find somewhere else but it was such an ideal camping spot that instead we decided to just pitch our tents, dump our gear and then go off exploring. We also did a bit of fishing to, though it was half-hearted at best. For the entire weekend I didn't even bother experimenting with different lures. try and I might, I just couldn't get overly exited about catching bass, which was the most likely target. It didn't help that I knew for sure this wasn't the best time of year to be chasing them - especially given how much fresh water had been raging through here lately. I don't think anyone got a single bite for the entire weekend.

We did, however, get to experience some of the nicest riverside scenery the Clarence has to offer and it was a refreshing and liesurely change of pace for me. The serenity was so thick that I almost fell asleep on the kayak numerous times. Perhaps it was a little too sleepy for Holger as well, because towards the end of the second day he decided to up the ante somewhat by undertaking a couple of very interesting experiments. One of which was to flip his Island over to see how easy it would be to turn it upright and climb back aboard (he did this twice) and the other was to swamp his yak with water to the point of sinking it, and then testing out his new bilge pump installation. This turned what was otherwise a very uneventful weekend into one of both amusement and education, and will be featured in the next episode of War on Fish.

I'll leave it to Holger to fully describe his bilge pump experiment (that is upcoming in an article that will be well-worth checking out) as well as the Island capsize experiment, in which he discovered an excellent method to handle.