The Saturday Loop From Connerly's Landing To Court Street

The sun isn't all the way up yet when the first kayaks slide off the bank at Connerly's Landing, and the water is still enough that you can hear the dip of a paddle two boats away before you see it. This is the unglamorous truth about Bayou DeSiard on a Saturday morning: it rewards people who show up early and know exactly where they're going, because the bayou has five different ways in, and they are not interchangeable.

Most people who paddle this stretch of water figure that out the hard way, usually by picking the free ramp and then watching the morning slip away before they've even loaded the car.

Not every launch gets you there by nine

Bayou DeSiard runs through Downtown Monroe and past the campuses of the University of Louisiana at Monroe and the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, and along the way it offers five public boat ramps, most of them free. There's the ramp on Highway 136 near Sterlington, another on Highway 134 at Fairbanks, one at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries District 2 office, a tight little launch at the corner of Forsythe Avenue and Loop Road that barely counts as a ramp, and Connerly's Landing, which is the only one that charges a fee.

That fee is four dollars, paid on the honor system into an envelope at the site. It is also the only launch positioned close enough to downtown that you can paddle out and back and still make it to a Saturday morning market before the tables come down. The free ramps are worth the drive if you have the whole morning open and no particular place to be by noon. Connerly's is worth the four dollars if you don't.

There's a second reason the paying landing wins on a tight morning. Connerly's Market Stand sits right next door, selling produce through the summer, so the same stop that gets you on the water also gets you tomatoes on the way out. The posted etiquette at the landing even asks paddlers not to block the parking for the barber shop next door, which tells you everything about how tucked into an actual working block this launch is. It isn't a remote put-in. It's a corner of the neighborhood that happens to also be a boat ramp.

What you're actually paddling through

The trip itself is an out and back, with little enough current that you can point your bow either direction and it won't matter much. Bayou DeSiard is home to the nationally recognized ULM waterski team, and paddlers who've logged time here describe cypress trees strung with Spanish moss on both banks, egrets working the shallows, pileated woodpeckers in the tree line, and on a good morning a bald eagle overhead.

The stretch through Monroe also has homes lining both sides for long sections, close enough that paddling it can feel like moving through people's backyards rather than a public waterway. One paddler who documented the route for other locals summed up the strange intimacy of it well: the quiet is close enough that "you won't need to shout to talk to a fellow paddler." The same account notes that road noise near Highway 165 is noticeable if not overwhelming, which is a fair trade for cypress-lined water inside city limits.

If you'd rather rent than haul your own boat, Ouachita Paddle & Provisions handles kayaks, paddleboards, and guided trips not just on the bayou but on the Ouachita River and out at Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, so a Saturday plan can scale up or down depending on how much gear you actually own.

Two markets, and only one of them is on Court Street

Here's where a lot of Saturday plans go sideways. Monroe has two different markets, and locals sometimes conflate them because they share a name in casual conversation.

The Monroe Farmers' Market is the older, longer-running institution, open through the summer Monday through Saturday mornings, generally from around 7 a.m. to noon, and it functions the way you'd expect an agricultural market to function: a weekday-friendly rotation of local produce that doesn't disappear after Saturday.

The Monroe Market is a distinct, Saturday-only event on Court Street, running from 8:30 a.m. to noon, and its 2026 season is confirmed to run from May 2 through October 31. That means it's live right now, in August, and will keep running into fall. It brings together vendors, farmers, bakers, and craftspeople in one weekly gathering rather than a daily rotation, which is a different kind of morning than the Monday-through-Saturday market offers.

If you show up at Court Street on a Tuesday expecting a market, you'll find storefronts and not much else. If you show up at the Farmers' Market on a Saturday afternoon expecting the Court Street crowd, you'll have missed it by hours. Knowing which market you're headed to, and when, is the difference between a morning that works and one that doesn't.

A Saturday that actually works

Here's a sequence that respects both the bayou's timing and the market's noon cutoff:

1. Launch at Connerly's Landing by 7:30, pay the four-dollar fee, and take the out-and-back at whatever pace the current allows, since there isn't much of one to fight.
2. Pull back in by 9, and pick up produce at Connerly's Market Stand while your gear dries in the truck bed.
3. Drive to Court Street by 9:30 or so, giving yourself a solid stretch of The Monroe Market's 8:30-to-noon window before vendors start packing up.
4. If Court Street runs light that week or you want a second stop, the Monroe Farmers' Market's longer summer hours cover you on a different day entirely.

None of this requires a boat you own outright, a car rack, or a full morning off. It requires knowing that the four-dollar landing is the fast one, and that Court Street on Saturday is not the same market as the one that runs all week.

The detail that sticks

What makes Bayou DeSiard worth understanding isn't that it's scenic, plenty of North Louisiana water is scenic. It's that the fastest way through a Saturday here runs directly counter to the instinct to save money first. The free ramps are the right call if your whole morning is open. The paid one is the right call if it isn't, and pairing it with Court Street on the right Saturday is the version of this loop that actually gets used more than once.

That's the kind of detail you only pick up by doing the loop, or by talking to someone who has.

If you're curious about more of what makes a Monroe Saturday tick, or you're thinking ahead to a move into a neighborhood near the water, John Michael Sampognaro is always glad to talk through what a specific street, block, or bend in the bayou actually looks like day to day. Let's Connect.