Trip: Ohoopee River, James B.Toler Rd. landing to Ga. 56
Meeting place, time and date: James B. Toler Rd. boat landing March 13, 2011 at 09:15 am
Put in: James B. Toler Rd. boat landing at 09:27 am
Take out: Ga. Hwy 56 at 11:07
Trip distance: 1 mile according to the Southern Ga. Canoeing guide, 3 miles according to the newer version
Shuttle distance: 8 miles
Trip notes and comments (paddlers, good stuff, bad stuff, river level, lunch stop, etc): Paddlers were Lamar Phillips, Buddy Goolsby and Dickie Tillman. This was the 3rd day of our 3 days paddling different sections of the Ohooppee. We chose this short section today as Buddy and Lamar were going to drive back to Atllanta once off the river. The river level had not changed much since yesterday. Swainsboro was at 11.9/500 cfs and Reidsville was at 7.9/1200 cfs. We would pass a few nice sand bars on the early section of this short run then the banks became wooded and well defined.
There is a low head dam just above Ga. 56. It has 4 places that portions of the top have been knocked out allowing water to pour through at lower levels. All of my previous trips I have portaged the dam because of having low water and a canoe loaded with camping gear. At todays water level it looked like 3 of the places had adequate water to run. Lamar and I elected to run the opening 2nd from river left and Buddy portaged around on the left bank. On my previous trips I have always lined my canoe through this same opening, 2nd from river left, have someone below to catch it, then carry my boat and gear across the (limestone?) bank below back to the water.
We had our boats off the water by 11:10 am making todays time on the water about 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Here is a link to some pictures of the trip.
