Scraggy Lake/Fish River in Nova Scotia

Trip Overview

First thing. Don't do this trip in the fall. No Water!

Four of us started at Camp Kidston, on Long Lake and made our way from there to Scraggy Lake then to Fish River. The plan was to go from Long Lake to the Moose River Provincial Park, then to portage from there to Scraggy Lake. Well, if you do this, make sure you get the most up to date information. The map we had was made in 1997, and it said that there was one path that went from the Moose River Road to Scraggy Lake. Reality was a different story. There were about 10 logging roads that all branched off this original road. We had a hell of a time finding the right one. Finally we found it, it was getting dark so we made camp on someone's Island, right outside their cottage. Nice Island.

The next day we spent paddling Scraggy, beautiful lake...some of the best paddling Ive seen. Then we made it to Fish River. As mentioned earlier, there is a great camp site right to the left of the dam as you are entering Fish River. We stopped and chilled for a while...then made our way through the river.

The water was ridiculously low! At every point where there would be rapids, we had to "Slogg", a new term we came up with on the trip for getting canoes over would be rapids, the canoes over rocks and trickling water. At the end of the slogging day we made it to Melvin Island, where there is a very nice camp site that we took advantage of.

Our pick up the next day was at 2pm, at a place named Taylor Meadows. Unfortunately we ran into the same problem with the out dated maps. The map we had, only showed one road going into the woods from Moose River, in reality there plenty more, which caused our driver to get lost. All in all it was a blast, we're going to do the same trip in May to try and take advantage of the rapids!

Outfitting:

No fiberglass or aluminum canoes! Are you crazy!

Current Map!

Fees:

No fees.