Spirit Of Moonpie and I spent the 23rd through the 25th on The Nottoway below Courtland. The water was high at 8.69 reported by the gauge at Sebrell, fast, clear and 49 degrees. Air temps ranged from 26 to 50. Pretty darn cold that first night. However, no Skeeters to deal with so that’s the trade off, I guess! I really only fished one day because there was so much trash to pick up on the first day.

I did catch a nice mess of speckle jigging a quarter-ounce blade bait in that deep curve behind the church. I also hung a big chain pickerel, which I really wanted — but lost — and three blackfish, which I did not want, but had fun catching. I also got a chance to check out the new bridge. It is very nice and should not cause any problems with log jams like the RR trestle upriver does.

The wildlife on this trip was really out and about. It’s like the cold snap reinvigorated everybody running around in the woods. I saw and heard deer. One came up to the tent the first night and did a round of snorting and bleating sounds that had Moonpie all up in my personal space in the sleeping bag. A sleeping bag is made for one person, not one person plus doggie!

Also the wild turkeys were everywhere, making all sorts of racket and waking me up at 5 a.m. They is some loud rascals!

I saw a tree (shrub), or really several of them right at my campsite that have the prettiest bright red berries on them right now. Nooo, it is not a holly tree. So, the first person that can tell me what this is (see photo), I will send you a Moonpie book. E-mail me your mailing address at blknotkpr@earthlink.net.

The main mission of this trip was to check on the Styrofoam from where it was dumped into the swamp along the Nottoway earlier this year. As you recall, all that stuff floated out of the swamp and into the river causing an ecological disaster. Well, it seems that the Styro has dispersed quit a bit since last time I saw it in the spring. It no longer is in great concentrated piles, but it is moving downriver as was to be expected. I imagine we will start seeing it around the Rt. 671 boat ramp in another year. It also seems to be breaking up into smaller pieces. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I know that makes it harder to get out of the river. Still, I picked up a trash bag full on this trip.

It’s still hard for me to believe that in this day and age there are people who knowingly do harm to our rivers. With all the environmental awareness commercials, enviropolitical (I made that word up) issues and supposedly greater intelligence of the general population, that people would think that they could do massive harm to the rivers and get away with it. What’s even crazier to me is the fact that when they get caught (as in this case), they get mad and blame and threaten others that will not tolerate the degradation of our rivers. So be it, but let it be known that there is now and will be in the future an ever-increasing, overwhelming public intolerance for such blatant acts that harm our rivers, and those good people will report these acts of environmental terrorism.

Long after I am gone there will be multitudes of people who are Defenders of the Rivers, on the two rivers we call the Nottoway and Blackwater.

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