View topic - Beresford Lake, Garner River, Upper Manigotagan River...

An extended Labour Day weekend found us having a comfy camp at Beresford Lake Campground and exploration of the local area. Although it did rain all night friday and half of saturday, we got on the water and did some exploration since it was our first time in that area.

The water level in the lake was down 2 feet which was apparent when we found dried up rapids on the Garner River just downstream from the lake, trickles of water where formidable rapids likely are usually found. We also found beaver dams at the top of each rapid and we theorize they were trying to stop the purge of water as the levels dropped below normal.

Also of interest was the fact the 3 rapids don't appear on the topo maps but the all have well marked portages.

We did map them, since we do that. So, to begin with, the map and some photo's with more to follow...

More Garner River photo's

Last rapid... or trickle.

Beresford Lake Park has 26 basic sites in total, about 10 are seasonal rentals. There are washrooms, a garbage area and free firewood. There is no beach or docks, but there is a park like area with nice rock shoreline for fishing. swimming and areas to pull a boat onto, albeit that is onto rock.

The park was about half full for Labour Day, likely due to the forecast of rain and cooler nights. We don't get out truck camping much but certainly enjoyed the comforts of using our coleman air bed with camp mats on top to ward off the cold air in the mattress. That likely contributed to the 9-10 hours of sleep we got each night and waking up refreshed instead of achy.

We had purchased a Guides tarp from MEC prior to our Obukowin trip but never used it out there but finally used it this weekend and we are indeed impressed. It will certainly be nice for future trips.

Having camp fires really does help make any trip and usually we don't get to have that in the wilderness and having the fire ban lifted for the weekend was an added bonus. It was unforetunate that some people have forgotten how to take care of their fires. When we returned from our day trip on Monday to find most people had already left, the two adjacent sites still had fires going in the pits. Sure, it is a steel enclosure, but the one neighbour had left logs burning.

Fishing was alright, we caught pike and pickerel from shore at the park and some nice pickerel on the Garner on sunday afternoon. We attempted to fish the lake proper saturday night and got into some nice jumbo perch but the wind arose and we were blown off the lake, literally. We decidedly have the wind against us this year but had a good lesson on running downwind in large waves. Unable to quater around a point without being rolled, we ended up on shore a ways from the park but it turned out we were adjacent to the boat ramp, so we portaged through the bush then set out again to round the last point and surfed to camp.

We explored the Garner on sunday and kept hearing an airplane but never saw it. We finally figured out it was an airboat in Grassy Rice Lake just downstream, harvesting the wild rice. We have seen the remnants of this venture on Leaf Lake and Obukowin but this was totally cool. Monday morning we actually saw the airboat in the Manigotagan as they prepared for another day of harvesting. Basically a crude steel structure, similiar to the photo we took on Obukowin, atop a jonboat with the large rice collector across the front. They just drive the airboat through the rice and whatever is ripe falls into the collector on the front.
A second regular boat with most likely family were along to collect the rice once the apparatus was full, so the airboat could make further passes. The Manigotagan is lined with rice on both sides all the way out to Long Lake so it must be profitable still with the ease of access.

Monday dawned sunny but windy so we loaded up the canoe and headed down the road to explore the Manigotagan down towards Long Lake.

The sign the province has posted along PR 314 shows the entire river route and all the rapids, excepting the 3 prior to Long Lake. I had thought I had seen something suggesting there were 3 but we soon found out anyway.

Same water issues as the Garner, which actually drains into the Manigotagan upstream of 314 out the bottom of Grassy Rice Lake. The first rapid I walked down and found small trapped fish in some of the pools, which turned out to be pike about 3-4 inches long. There was further crawfish carnage along these rapids the same as the Garner. Obviously the low levels had trapped many crawfish in the pools and the raccoons were making a killing.

There were the usual signs of bears, wolves and moose on the trails but we didn't see any large animals on this trip.

We did all three ports and paddled all the way out to Long Lake. The lake was too rough to get out onto for fishing and the river only coughed up one scrawny pike, but considering we had a large cold front move through the day before I wasn't really surprised.

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