Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Spirit of Moonpie and I spent May the 29th through June the 1st on the Blackwater below Franklin. The water was normal, slightly stagnant, air temps ranged from 67 to 90 degrees. Sorry no water temp again, I hope to remedy that soon. 

The trash on this trip was… diverse. Besides the regular filth, I also collected a large trash can, a wheel from some kind of kiddie toy, a ball, a plastic tote and a kiddie bicycle helmet. There were several other balls out there, but I could not get to them in the pontoon boat. I wonder how much Franklin Parks and Recreation spends on balls or has spent on replacing all the balls (over a hundred) I have removed from the river in the past 22 years. 

Also, at a location along the river where a swamp comes into the river, I smelled a strong odor of sewage. I have been monitoring this place for a couple years, and with this occurrence, I have enough to get an investigation going. Because of that I cannot divulge the location, but I will be reporting the progress of that investigation when I am able to do so without compromising those efforts.  

The fishing on this trip was OK, just not for catfish. I was definitely not Katmandu this time. In fact, I was skunked both nights on the catfish. The first night I can blame on the water not running, but night two I have no excuses as the water started running out at 10 p.m. I did catch a couple of nice bass the first day fishing a jerk bait; one was nearly 3 pounds. Day two I didn’t even fish as it was just too hot. So I just rode around picking up trash, which is getting expensive to do now with the price of gas as it is. 

This was the first trip of the year on the pontoon boat. I only forgot a couple of things, but all in all I did pretty good. Usually in the transition from land-based camp to summer pontoon base camp, there are several goof-ups. Sometimes I just amaze myself in my old age out here on the two rivers we call the Blackwater and Nottoway.

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.