Honeoye Lake is Green (Sometimes).

The kayak gods were against us yesterday as Jeff Buchman, Heather Adams, and I embarked to circumnavigate Honeoye Lake. I awoke to birds outside my window and thought, "Wow, it sure is bright outside for being 6:30am... ... CRAP! It's 7:45am!" Already 15 minutes late to meet Rob in Trumansburg (a 25 minute drive from Ithaca). As it turned out, Rob couldn't join us anymore, so I was able to give the Rochesterians a heads-up and meet them a half hour later. No stress. 

An hour into the drive I got a call from Heather, who was already at Sandy Bottom Park - our launch spot at the north end of the lake. Apparently there were signs posted near the water warning of hazardous water conditions due to an algal bloom. When Jeff and I arrived, we decided to brave the green and paddle anyway! 

One of the locals mentioned that algal blooms happen relatively often when the lake turns over. Nutrient-rich but oxygen deficient water from the cool, bottom layer of the lake mixes with the warm, Oxygen-rich but nutrient deficient water on the surface of the lake. This leads to the perfect conditions for algae growth at the surface of the lake. Honeoye Lake is the shallowest of the Finger Lakes - 30 ft at its deepest point (compared to Seneca's 630 ft!).  Pretty much just a big puddle! It freezes over completely in the winter, making it a popular place for ice fishing and skating.

Jeff and Heather launching from Sandy Bottom Park into the algae-green water.

The green-ness of the water decreased as we paddled farther from the north end of the lake. The wind was against us on the way down, but helpful on the way back. 

At the south end of the lake we explored the marshy, undeveloped inlet a bit. We found a lot of dead-end channels, but never managed to find the main one. Since we couldn't find solid ground to stretch our legs on, we rafted up and ate lunch in our boats.

Exploring the inlet at the south end of Honeoye Lake. Lots of duckweed!

It was a beautiful day for a paddle! Honeoye Lake is known as one of the best fishing locations in the Finger Lakes, but we didn't see too many motor boats. Maybe the algae affects the fishing... One thing we noticed was the contrast of high density development along the shores against the virtually undeveloped slopes. We came to the conclusion that many of these were smaller, family-oriented cottages, as opposed to the incredibly fancy, manicured mansions on Canandaigua Lake. According to this website, Honeoye Lake has the greatest amount of forested land in its watershed (85%), and the least amount of agricultural land (10%). Paddling from north to south gave us a beautiful view of the majestic hills at the south end of the lake:

We took out in the somewhat smelly little pond behind the "beach" at Sandy Bottom Beach Park, where we found this little critter:

Date: Sept. 18th, 2010

Distance: 10 miles

Weather: Quite amicable

Time: 4 hours

Only Otisco and Canadice Lakes to go! I may save one or both of these for when the fall foliage is at it's peak, since that will be another unique Finger Lakes paddling experience!

Exploring Honeoye ... er... Conesus!

When we (Neal, a new rough rider, and I) arrived at Honeoye Lake, we couldn’t seem to find the park to launch from so we stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. As we pulled into the gas station I finally decided it would be a good idea to pull out my map of NY to see where exactly we were. Somehow we’d managed to miss Honeoye and end up at Conesus (3 lakes over! oops). No worries! Conesus is still a finger lake, so we put in at a little park off of Pebble Beach Rd and started paddling!

A picture of the put-in:

A few miles down we stopped at a park that had a designated swimming area and two docks (one for the awesome sheriff’s trailer that was stationed there):

So far, Conesus is probably the most (consistently) built-up finger lake. All the other lakes have at least short stretches of shore that are either too steep to hold houses, or the houses are well camouflaged in the trees.
At the turning point we stopped to cool off and try standing up in our boats. Needless to say, we got quite damp.

Then Neal wanted to try a roll (which he’d only really read about and tried once or twice). I demonstrated a sweep roll. He tried it and made it up on the first (and second and third) try. Considering that it took me 2 years to really learn how to roll, I was quite surprised. Pretty exciting!

We crossed the lake and headed up the east side, making it back to the put-in about 4 hours after we left.

This trip puts me at 109 miles before leaving for NH!

Date: Friday June 4th, 2010


Distance: 12.5 miles