re: Lake Ouachita - Arkansas

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Whats wrong with camping?

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Nothing's wrong with camping with strippers. Something about a hot nekkid woman outside is better!

We had a group that went up there and camped on the islands for Labor Day weekend. We took our own boats and didn't deal with the marinas. We always carried along some old tires for pulling the boats onto the rocky banks. Take firewood with you if you want a camp fire - the islands are picked clean of dead wood. No snake problems for us but they did have some nasty little biting flies.

I've stayed on that lake for weeks at a time island hopping on my sailboat. The island on the east end across from the state park has a huge vein of crystals running through it. Bring a rake and a pick and go to the top. You'll see a hole where they were excavated. You can carry back a ton of really clear ones from up there or if you're diving you can get them from underwater. But that's not a good place to camp. Water's too deep and rocky for anchoring safely.

Out in the middle there's a few big islands and one of them has a perfect circular protected cove with a small northern entrance. That's probably the best spot on the lake because the mosquitos and flies aren't bad out there in the middle like they are if you hug the shoreline. There are still snakes and even though you're gonna think they're cottonmouths, they're actually water snakes. And it's not like there gazillions of them. That Island has numerous good camping spots as well as places to anchor or tie off. I'd bring a few hundred extra feet of rope for that. More is better. Just remember, other than that spot, if you are anchoring out on the islands, stay off the north or western shores. When big storms come through that's the direction they come from and they will throw you up on the rocks.

Honestly you can find great spots all over that lake. If you catch it at the right time the water is so clear it's like diving in air. It's so clear that there's actually a species of jellyfish that lives in the lake. Not a dangerous variety. Some chinese transplant apparently that requires super clean water to live.