Spirit of Moonpie and I spent the 20th and 21st on the Blackwater above Joyner’s Bridge. The water was 64 and air temps ranged from 42 to 80. We were scheduled to stay three days, but on the second day NOAA said it was going to rain that night, so we came in. It did not rain.

Trash on this trip was light and I only picked up a half a bag.

The fishing was pretty good. I caught several nice bass to two pounds. I believe they are pre-spawn as I saw several in really shallow water making beds. For those that do not know, when fish make beds they fan the sand on the river bottom with their tails to form a shallow bowl-shaped depression. That is where they deposit their eggs.

I also caught two citation chain pickerel (we call them Jacks), one that was 4.10 pounds. It was really strange, after I caught the first Jack it took me like 20 minutes to get the lure out of the net and fix the lure. I had drifted away from the spot I caught the big Jack from so I motored back to that location, made one cast in the exact same place and caught the second larger Jack! That was pretty weird. All fish were caught on a Mepps Minnow and an AC Shiner.

Then, Spirit of Moonpie and I spent the 25th and 26th on the Blackwater below Franklin. We only stayed two days because on the second day NOAA said it was going to storm that night, so we came in. It did not storm or rain.

Trash on this trip was light. Even the City of Franklin storm water canal was clean. I was really happy about that. It is Clean Rivers Month, so I’m not sure if it was something the city did or one of our clean-up teams, don’t matter, there was little trash and that is great! The fishing on this trip was pretty good also. I caught a bunch more jacks, which I kept because they are my favorite eating fish. I caught a few fat small bass to two pounds. All fish once again were caught on the Mepps Minnow and AC Shiner.

So everybody knows beenie weenies (BWS) are certainly high up on the list of must-have fishing food. There are many brands, including Beanee Weenee (which I do not like) and Food Lion brand, which I like and recommend now that Phillips Beans and Franks are no longer available here. So I have been having difficulty in the past few trips eating my daily-prescribed BWS due to broken utensils. I started out with the cheap white plastic fork that somehow kept on getting broken in my padded video equipment box.

So I upgraded to the gourmet heavy-duty clear plastic forks, same thing. I would go to eat my yummy BWS and find the darn fork broke again. It is very hard to eat BWS out of the can by just turning the can up; you just cannot get all of the contents emptied out. It is very frustrating and as you can see by the pic, it will make one become very thin — even skeleton-like.

Well, after contemplating how to correct this terrible and unacceptable dilemma, which included taking a metal fork, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. It came to me sitting by the campfire the other night, an ancient lesson I had been taught years ago by my elders that I had forgotten. The proper, most bestest, goodest, must-have utensil for Beenie Weenies is … a pack of NABS! Which I will never be without again on the two rivers we call the Blackwater and Nottoway.

JEFF TURNER is the Blackwater/Nottoway Riverkeeper. He can be reached at blknotkpr@earthlink.net.