Riverkeeper report: Celebrating 27 years of river birthdays
Published 12:23 pm Saturday, December 19, 2015
Spirit of Moonpie and I spent the 10th through the 12th on the Blackwater below the Steel Bridge. The water was clear, 4.91 on the USGS gauge at Burdette and 47 degrees. Air temps ranged from 41 to 80 degrees. Yes, 80 in December, unbelievable, rather nice.
Trash on this trip was horrendous, as is usually the case on that part of the river. I think a majority of it comes from people fishing from the road at the Burdette Bridge, right by the “No Littering” sign, of course.
This scene is from the past spring when Styrofoam was discovered in the Nottoway River. — Jeff Turner
The fishing on this trip was truly poor, at least for me. I even followed a bald eagle to a location but evidently its intent was not to put me on fish. Moonpie even asked why I always seem to think they are leading me to something. My reply was, “They always see to tell me to follow them, so I do for as long as I can and then I think I am where they want me, right?”
Anyway, I caught six yellow perch, a bass and a blackfish the entire two days of fishing. I saw some folks, though, that knew what they were doing and they had caught a bunch of yellow perch. I even fished in their spot after they left and only caught two. Maybe they had caught all of them; that’s what I’m claiming anyway! I really did not care, the weather was so nice and I had a good time just putting around and picking up trash … well, not the trash part.
This picture, taken most recently, shows that most of the Styrofoam on the Nottoway River has been cleaned up.
I want to clarify something from my last article I wrote about the Styrofoam in the Nottoway since there seems to be some confusion about what I wrote. The Styro I saw that trip was not new material, it was from the original incident earlier this spring. The landowners of where that stuff came from have cleaned up and remediated the area where the Styro was originally dumped into the swamp as fill for a path. So there is no “new” Styrofoam in the river.
And now for some interesting Riverkeeper facts. I spent my birthday on the river this year, again it seems. There is no other place I would rather be for that occasion and that’s very evident as I looked back in my records and found that I have spent the following birthday’s on the river, (1988/29th) (1992/33rd) (1995/36th) (1998/39th) (2000/41st) (2003/44th) (2006/47th) (2011/52nd) (2014/55th) (2015/56th).
A wonderful span of 27 years on the two rivers we call the Blackwater and Nottoway.
