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The deep gorge of the Middle Allegheny River evolved from glacial action thousands of years ago, but Mother Nature still plays tricks out there today. Such as the surprising and powerful upstream headwinds that five of us encountered last Saturday in Warren County during a 10-mile float for smallmouth bass.
Even when little or no breeze occurs above the shoreline, we always experience wind in our faces on the water. Sometimes it feels like a wind tunnel effect, as the river somehow inhales strong gusts upstream against the downstream water currents.
“Look at that,” my boat-mate Gary said, pointing to a bend in the river downstream and a tall, steep hillside there that should have blocked the breezes. “How can it be so windy way down here under the mountains?”
Shortly afterwards, we entered a straightaway near Thompson Island, and the headwinds really kicked in. White-capped waves actually formed on the surface, and the five of us, in two canoes and a kayak, stopped fishing and dug our paddles in, just to make progress downstream. Two miles short of Camp F-Troop, we abandoned the float trip and put in at Conklin Run, and Gary volunteered to walk down to camp to fetch a vehicle. “Next time I’ll bring an electric trolling motor!” he yelled back at us as he set out along the dirt road.
Earlier in the day, though, the winds were calmer, and we did some serious angling. We put in at Black Creek, 10 miles up from camp, with Todd and Billy in their Gander Mountain canoe, Gary and me in my battered and bent old Sportspal 16-footer and Brett in a borrowed kayak. We paddled downstream and steered to the narrower flows around islands, where we often encountered the fast runs and deep pools that hold gamefish. We beached our watercraft several times that morning and got out and fished.
I caught the first bass, a small fish on a big lure, but Gary caught the most. On Friday he had visited Wal-Mart and bought a Mepps Comet spinner with a soft plastic minnow attached. “That’s a strange-looking lure,” I told him Saturday morning, but he caught six or seven smallies with it anyway, some of them good-sized.
Todd, Billy and I stuck mostly with our favorite Rapala lures and Frenzy Minnow crankbaits and tossed them into the currents and eddies time after time. We each landed two or three fish, not counting Todd’s “big one that got away.” He hooked a lunker in a deep run and battled the fish for five minutes until the line tightened and snapped. Billy and Todd both gave out a disappointed groan, but one minute later, the fish reappeared. It leaped into the air three feet from Brett’s nearby kayak and displayed an orange Frenzy Minnow lure loosely attached to its lip. At the peak of its jump, the big smallmouth spit the lure and then plunged back into the river. “At least 17 or 18 inches long,” Brett estimated. “Probably more than two pounds.”
But there was one more big fish yet to come. Across from the mouth of Thompson Run, Brett found some deep water below a shoreline of big boulders. He chunked in a big spinnerbait — which I think is an alien-looking whirligig contraption of a lure — again and again into the dark green waters and finally hooked a big fish that pulled him and his light kayak along the surface. But the fish eventually tired and Brett boated him. It turned out to be a 17-inch walleye that we tossed into a cooler and later pan-fried and snacked on over our evening campfire.
Right after the walleye catch, though, the big winds came, and our fishing day was over.
Good luck out there, and have a great week outdoors.
Don Feigert is the outdoors writer for THE HERALD and the ALLIED NEWS. His latest book, The F-Troop Camp Chronicles, and his earlier books are available by contacting Don at 724-931-1699 or dfeigert@verizon.net. Visit his Website at www.donfeigert.com.
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Two F-Troop fishermen beach their canoe on an island to fish the riffle.
Outdoors: Paddling into the Allegheny River headwind
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