Spirit of Moonpie and I spent the 11th through the 13th on the Blackwater below Franklin. The 11th is my birthday, so over the years I have spent my 29th, 33rd, 36th, 39th, 41st, 47th and now my 55th birthday on the river. The water was normal, finally, and 44 degrees. It was nice to see some water in the river again. Air temps ranged from 26 to 55 degrees.

Trash was bad enough, but I saw no other water quality issues. There was lots of leaves and sticks, etc., which is normal this time of year and that meant stopping to clear the prop often, but other than that the river was in good shape.

The fishing on this trip was great for catfish. I caught seven fish to 16 pounds on 10 limb-lines. The bait of choice was jack belly; I caught three of those on the Mepps Minnow and CC Shad.

Actually, I had a weird thing happen the second night/day. I got the lines/jugs in and cleaned the fish that second morning. I went to start putting the jugs away and noticed I was missing one. Looked all over the boat to no avail. So I took off back to where I had the lines set but saw nothing. With no other choice I headed on downriver and sure enough, TWO whole miles downriver I found the missing jug.

See, I attach a jug to my limb-lines, that gives me a way to write my info on them so they are legal, the jug also gives me a place to store the lines when I’m done and as was the case this time, if the fish breaks the limb, I can still collect the fish ‘cause the jug will float.

Anyway, when I got to the jug, the fish had pooped out from towing a tree limb and jug two miles, but that was the line that had the 16-pound catfish on it, so I was glad I had that jug on there.

The other weird thing is when I was cleaning the other fish earlier, I knew I needed one more big fish to fill out an order a friend of mine had put in for 10 pounds of catfish to make a muddle. So I guess the river spirits once again figured they would intervene and provide me with one more big Mr. Whiskers.

Oh, and I guess you’re still wondering about that title to this report huh? Well, Moonpie and I were fishing along the first day and came upon this large pile of sticks,etc.

Moonpie said, “Dang, that’s the sorriest-looking beaver hut (see photo) I ever did see.”

“That ain’t no beaver hut, you dummy,” I replied, “That’s the beavers’ food stash for the winter.”

“Oh,” exclaimed Moonpie, “So it’s kinda like the beavers’ grocery store.”

“Well, yes,” I replied, “I guess you could say that.”

So folks, you see I had to come up with something that would make you read this story, guess it worked, huh?

I mean even beavers have to go to the grocery store 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.