Mile 115.8 - LBD Pipeline Canal to Dog Island Pass and Flat Lake
115.8 LBD Pipeline Canal to Dog Island Pass and Flat Lake
Paddlers can gain access to atmospheric Flat Lake via this pipeline canal. Follow canal north through some airy marshes and willows and turn east onto Dog Island Pass. Dog Island Pass is a broad channel lined with cypress on the far side. Dog Island Pass narrows into an incredible collection of stately cypress guarding the neck to open water beyond, each one taller and more noble than the one before, each thick with Spanish moss. This delightful neck leads you into the lake itself. In catastrophic high waters (8 or more on the Morgan City Gage) Atchafalaya River waters will wash across Drew’s Island directly into Flat Lake. At these levels paddlers will want to avoid travel on the river. Very dangerous.
Flat Lake
Flat Lake is the quintessential Louisiana lake, ringed by some of the most beautiful, austere cypress trees seen anywhere in the south. Paddlers coming down the Mississippi who lock over into the Atchafalaya can make a short detour off the main channel at mile 115.8 LBD and access Flat Lake via a pipeline canal that opens into Flat Lake Pass which leads to the lake itself. Paddle across the lake (3-5 miles depending on your route) and return to main channel via Drew’s Pass. Flat Lake is also a fishermen’s paradise. In the winter, deep dead-end channels off the main Atchafalaya River and its two outlets to the Gulf of Mexico may hold good pockets of fish. Some anglers fish Flat Lake, one of four interconnected natural lakes north of Morgan City. Through various bayous and channels, Flat Lake connects to the 11,500-acre Lake Palourde and the 1,024-acre Grassy Lake. Just to the north, these lakes connect to the 14,000-acre Lake Verret at the southern end of the Atchafalaya Basin. “The Lake Verret area probably has lower numbers of bass, but bigger fish,” said Mike Walker, a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologist in New Iberia. “The marshes in St. Mary and Terrebonne parishes have the numbers. The average weight of bass in the Atchafalaya Basin is about two pounds, but there have been some bass over 10 pounds caught due to the Florida bass stocking program.”