Gnats in June.

Status
Not open for further replies.
Brent said:
Hmmm, Our first year at Powell in 2004 we had bad gnats. We thought it was the area we were in, not the date

Our first night of hell on the lake after getting blown off the beach at Cookie Jar and then in a really bad storm in the middle of Padre Bay in the dark. We finally found a spot to anchor on the peninsula between Gunsight and Padre Bay, it had a lot of tamarisk bushes. The gnats were so bad our ceiling in our houseboat was black with gnats. We learned to close all our windows and turn off the interior lights and run the AC. Later on that same trip we ended up at Dungeon canyon and had very few gnats at that location and the last day we ended up on the east side of Gunsight and had very few gnats as well.

Our normal trip now is the last week in July / first week August and the gnats are not an issue at all during that time.
Click to expand...
Swapping the gnat problem for Rattlers. I'll take the rattlers.
 
Just got back from this years trip and we had no issues with gnats this year even though we were not far from where we camped last year. Looks like last year must have been the perfect conditions because I have never seen anything like it, and I hope to never see it again.

It was quite the experience this year with the lake level rising about 9 feet during our trip. We watched the large island at the back of Padre canyon disappear in the week we were there and lost so much of our own beach we had to move our anchors twice. We placed our anchors as high up the beach as we could given our rope length. We would tighten the ropes every night and take all of the slack out of the rope and still wake up with our ropes dangling in the water.

It is certainly exciting to see the lake rise this much, but it also adds some risk to camping. While we were there we had afternoon wind storms fairly regularly. During one storm while I was keeping our houseboat beached I heard a call over the marine radio that someone on a houseboat close to cookie jar had lost a finger during the storm. My guess is they waited too long to tighten their ropes and then tried to do it at the worst possible time. Just a reminder for anyone heading down there while the water level is rising this fast.
 
Gnats were as bad this year as last. I am not a fan of chemical sprays but a can of Hot Shot flying insect spray was my best friend this past week. We were one night at Gunsight and two at Wetherill.
 
Last week in Padre Canyon started out with very few gnats, but by last weekend, the entire shady side of the boat was covered, so maybe they are just late bloomers this year with the strange weather pattern?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top