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Spirit of Moonpie and I spent October the 19th through the 21st on the Nottoway below the Bronco Club. The water was 62 degrees, air temps ranged from 37 to 68 degrees. It was awesome camping weather, except the first day was windy as heck. 

I picked up only two bottles, so it was nice not to have to spend time picking up others’ trash. Didn’t see any other problems ’cept I removed three lures along with lots of fishing line from the trees. Also, there was a fire someone had up on shore in mighty breezy conditions, but it turned out it was being well managed.

We saw a bald eagle on this trip down near the U.S. Route 258 bridge. I could not get a pic in time, but as always it was cool to see. I also saw a big deer that startled us pretty good. One of the missions of this trip was to harvest some squirrels for my yearly Brunswick stew, and I did accomplish that. However, it took both days to do so because the wind was so bad the first day.

The fishing on this trip was just plain… bad. I casted and casted and only caught one bass the entire trip and one baby chain pickerel. I did not fish for catfish as I caught enough of those on the last trip to last me the winter. Oddly enough, though, I ran into the Department of Wildlife Resources shock boat team, and they were doing great. They said they were getting about 50 bass an hour, which is pretty normal. So there you go… the fish are there, I just don’t know how to catch them, I guess!

We had a pretty cool experience down near Point Seine Beach. I heard a helicopter comin’, and then it faded away. I told Moonpie I bet that chopper is following the river, because it acted just like a boat at that part of the river. It’s a long, long peninsula, and it always sounds funny because you will hear a boat coming, sounding close; then it will fade away like it’s going away… and technically it is. Then it will pop around that bend at Point Seine Beach and, of course, start getting louder again as it again approaches. And that’s what happened with this big helicopter. When it popped around the corner, it was below the tree line in the middle of the river. Luckily for us they saw us and then pulled up and got off of the river. I’m glad they did, as that monster would have sent us a-flyin’!

So it was a great trip all together, and we even got to see an air show on the two rivers we call the Nottoway and Blackwater.

Jeff Turner is the Blackwater Nottoway RiverGuard. To contact him about river issues, send him an email at blknotkpr@earthlink.net. He can also be followed on the Blackwater Nottoway RiverGuard Facebook page. Just type in “Blackwater Nottoway RiverGuard” in the search field on Facebook.