Patrick's Rants

We’ve been camping a few times this summer. Three times at Blue Ridge Reservoir, and this past week at Beaver Creek Campground. It was rainy this past weekend, the forecast was for 60 – 80% chance of continuing rain and I was sure that we wouldn’t be heading anywhere to camp. But my wife decided she was going camping and there wasn’t anything that I could do about it, except go along. Rock Crossing is our favorite campground, but we’ve been there when it’s been raining. It’s miserable – or least I am.

The water was high and running quickly. Not so quickly that the kids couldn’t get in, swim, splash around and ride the float down the channel, but quickly enough to keep the bottom swirled up and the water a bit muddy in the widened space we were using. I fished all three days we were there with only a minor amount of luck. A nice sized catfish hooked on my line, but I was too far from my net to slip under it and as soon as I tried to lift it out of the water my 6lb or so line just snapped and the fish was gone. It was later, fishing just as the light was beginning to fade that I hooked into my only trout of the trip. I was casting my line across the creek nearly landing the bait no the shore and letting it float down the current when I noticed what looked like a little pop on the bobber. A couple more casts exactly the same and I hooked a 10 – 12″ rainbow trout. I was hoping to hook a catfish or two and switched to hotdogs on the bottom – and to my new catfish pole (replacing the pole lost at Lake Mary) and settled in to fish.

Around 9:30 or 10:00 my wife came down to the water to check on my luck. While we were chatting, I caught movement from the corner of my eye. A skunk. And then two and then five. What is it with night fishing and skunks? I decided to give up on the fishing, packed my stuff up and grabbed my trout. We went back to our camp site and I started to clean my fish. Apparently fish smells good to skunks because one walked up right behind me while I was cleaning the fish. I had to clean it quickly, slip it into a ziplock bag and drop it into the cooler. I put my fishing bait in the trunk of my car too so the skunks would leave.

For breakfast we had bacon, eggs, potatoes, and no my plate fresh trout cooked over the grill. Butter, salt, pepper and the last of the Corona limes squeezed over the top and sealed in foil. The trout was absolutely delicious. My wife asked for a small taste and then kept taking forks full from my plate. She agreed that I could bring home more trout to cook.

A few things to remember if you are going to Beaver Creek:

• it can get noisy during the day since it’s easy to get to, the PBR crowd just may show up
• do not keep trash at your campsite overnight, the skunks will visit – they even licked the greasy spot where our portable grill was sitting. We kept the grill in the back of our van
• No see ums are out morning and evening, put on bug spray before bed. Watch out for the ants too, they are everywhere
• The campground is small – 12 rentable spaces – and you are fairly close to your neighbors
• There is a charge for your second vehicle if you have one
• Firewood can be bought from the host or picked up in the forest
• The water is not deep enough for diving

All in all we had a great time even though it rained for days in Flagstaff (we only had a little bit of rain). The camp hosts were very friendly, chatting any time we ran into them.