Mile 44.4 - LBD Bohemia Beach

44.4 LBD Bohemia Beach

Best all-weather camping and picnicking below New Orleans. Good up to 8NO gage, questionable after that, completely underwater at 12NO gage. Last big beach on the Lower Mississippi River.

At the end of the roads and levees on the east bank of the Mississippi River lies a beautiful, calming, freshwater beach. With the help of wind and consistent freighter. This is where the trees shorten and the marsh starts, and the river starts to act like an ocean. With the tide effect, and waves crashing from passing freighters you get a Caribbean feel. The long slightly crested shoreline is very gently sloped, with fern-like willows starting the grassy meadows adjacent to the tree line. A haven for many birds including osprey, eagles, seagulls, hawks, anhingas, roseate spoonbills, herons, egrets, pelicans, and frigates. Be aware of the water line, and set your camp well above. Ocean-liners and freighters create ocean-like waves when passing. Place your tents in the second line of trees. Some bored river-rats, waiting out a storm, built a make-ship playground of barge rope and wire spoils adding character to this freshwater paradise. (Mark River)

Bohemia Beach is an unusual sanctuary of firm sand, willows, and wildlife, located at the end of the roads along the East Bank. This is the last big beach on the Lower Mississippi River! (Until you reach the beaches at the ends of the passes, that is). At its southern end is the head of the first natural pass to the Gulf, Mardis Gras Pass. Bohemia Beach is the best all-weather camping and picnicking below New Orleans. It is high enough to create good low water and camping, but low enough in the surrounding willows and marshes to not be industrialized. The ground here is dry up to 8NO gage, but questionable after that. The entire beach and safe dry places go completely underwater at 12NO gage. You’ll find shelves of sand and grasses perched 3-4 feet above the river at low tide, in low water (0-8NO), but watch for dramatic shifts in water level with passing boats, especially cruise ships and container ships.

Clumps of willows grow close to the water’s edge along the whole length of the beach, creating inlets between them, and hence a series of private beaches. You could pull up in between any of these clumps of willows and pull your vessel high into the grasses further back and enjoy a completely isolated and protected place, even if some other party was camping nearby. Watch out, however, for fast-rising waters coming in crashing waves between the trees as the tide comes in an ships go flying by. These private beaches begin below the channel marker 44.9 LBD and continue downstream a half mile where a broad beach opens up and runs further downstream to the top of a inlet with a thriving population of birds, amphibians and mammals. Low willow forests surround this inlet, and others connected to it, but are unfit for camping because of swiftly rising waters during high tide and passing ships. Further back behind the beaches you’ll find a diverse forest with tallow, live oak, river birch, red maple, sycamore, hackberry, chinaberry and pecan. Similar to bottomland hardwood forests further north, but the trees here are shorter with smaller trunks.

WARNING: Do not camp on this beach! Do not leave your vessel unattended on this beach! Because of its shallow waters and the proximity of the main channel, tsunami-like conditions can occur here with the passing of big ships. You will be horrified to experience this. All of the water drains off the beach, hundreds of feet out in sickening sucking sounds. There is a pause. Then all of the water returns, and the glistening wet sand is replaced with wave upon wave of returning high water, lines of curling crashing waves that slap the beach repeatedly higher and higher until the whole beach is swarmed over, right up to the high grasses behind! Just like a mini-tsunami, the water here reacts with extreme reversals across the beach.

NOTE: cruise ships often pass in the night, returning from their overnight runs across the Gulf of Mexico from Cancun. Container ships will sometimes wait until high tide to come charging up the river, resulting in the biggest possible waves at the highest of water levels.

Surrounded by wetlands, marshes, and not far from the open waters of Breton Sound, Bohemia Beach thrives with wildlife, and not only birds and amphibians (we saw sliders, tree frogs and alligators) but also lots of mammals. During the 2015 Rivergator Exploratory Expedition we saw or found evidence of coyote, raccoon, armadillo, and wild pigs. Winged predators included marsh hawks, turkey vultures, black vultures, frigate birds, bald eagles and lots of osprey. Eagle sightings decline towards the Gulf and osprey sightings increase. This amount of wildlife alone would make the visit memorable. But wait, there is more to come! Bohemia is overflowing with shore birds and waders. We witnessed (and took great photographs of) terns, brown boobys, anhingas, great and lesser egrets, sandpipers, and the beautiful roseatte spoonbill. The ubiquitous blue heron is joined here by its relatives the yellow heron, green heron and night heron. The white pelicans we have been seeing up and down the Lower Mississippi are now joined by their brothers and sisters, the brown pelicans, the state bird of Louisiana. Several crustaceans also made themselves known: barnacles, crawdads, and river shrimp. In steamboat days river shrimp were common fare on the Mississippi River (but have almost disappeared in modern days due to over-fishing industrialization). Lastly from the mollusk family we found several different kinds of clams (rangia and others) and mussels (heelsplitter, zebra, and others).