Spirit Of Moonpie and I spent the 9th through the 11th on the Blackwater above Joyner’s Bridge. The water was really cold at 36 degrees, fast and 6.30 on the USGS gauge in Burdette. Air temps ranged from a damp 26 to 45 degrees and it SNOWED on me! It was a really cold trip. So cold, in fact, that I wore Moonpie like a mink stole, and she was happy with that being around my neck.

I picked up right much trash, but I guess that’s because I had not been on that part of the river in a right long time.

What really surprised me is the fact that I caught fish, a lot of fish. Started off catching bowfin and then started catching catfish while I was jigging for bowfin. I reckon I caught 15 of each all in 40-feet of water vertical jigging a blade bait. The catfish must have been there in the hundreds. They were 12-feet thick on the sonar and were just holding midway from the bottom. I snagged most of them it seems ‘cause they were not hooked in the mouth. However, the weird thing is that they seemed to be striking, or at least that’s what it felt like. I guess they could have been striking at it, or more than one was going after it and I felt that, snatched and would just hook one? Who knows? All I know was it was fun.

Even though it snowed on me and I had to spend three hours under the bridge to get out of it, I was pretty lucky weather-wise. The forecast was all over the place when I left on Sunday. The thing is I was plain tired of being in the house because of bad weather, so I took the chance that it would not be too bad.

The good Lord did me right on this one, and as I am on every trip I was thankful once again to be out on one of the two rivers we call the Blackwater and Nottoway.