By Don Feigert
Herald Outdoors Writer
---- —
The Ninth Annual Fireside Philosophers event began last weekend with five Pennsylvania outdoors writers congregating at Camp F-Troop for a four-hour evening campfire featuring corn-on-the-cob, venison teriyaki, a taste of Kentucky bourbon and lots of semi-brilliant conversation over the pinewood flames. Late at night, Post-Gazette columnist Ben Moyer demonstrated the laws of Isaac Newton physics by falling near the campfire ring and rolling downhill all the way to the camp back door.
Bedford Gazette columnist Harry Guyer and Game News writer Gregg Rinkus raised their glasses to toast Ben’s achievement, while local writers Brad Isles and I looked on in wonder and admiration.
Saturday morning the five of us mounted two canoes and one kayak on our four-wheel-drives and traveled upstream along the Allegheny all the way to the tailrace of the Kinzua Dam. As camp leader, I selected the west side (or undeveloped non-canoe-launching wilderness area) of the river, where we parked our vehicles and examined the steep 100-foot gravelly drop-off that would constitute our launch point. Slowly and carefully we guided our watercraft and gear down to the water’s edge and experienced only one accident, a runaway cooler that galloped down the hill and spewed ice, lunchmeat and water bottles in every direction. Again it was the great empirical scientist Ben who engineered that demonstration.
We began casting right away and soon Brad caught the first fish of the day, a small rainbow trout taken on a Mepps Comet lure. Soon after, I pulled four rainbows in 10 minutes out of a long stretch of fast riffle, and Gregg and Harry joined the attack by landing several small trout each over the next two hours. From the tailrace seven miles down to the first bridge in Warren, Pa., we caught at least 30 small rainbow trout, finding them numerous and voracious in every fast-water section with rocky bottom cover along the way. We assumed this was due to our aggregate and awesome angling skills, but not long after our weekend ended, we read in Pa. Outdoor News that PF&B hatcheries had recently raised far too many rainbows to manage in the raceways, so they released 50,000 specimens into the Upper Allegheny a week before we arrived. Regardless, I’m still sticking to my angling skills story.
Bass remained elusive, however. We concluded that the coldwater emissions from the bottom of the Kinzua Dam favored trout and not bass for the first few miles downstream. Only Ben had success, catching two good smallmouths and a large rock bass, all of which became components of our fresh-fish shore lunch on a selected island in the mid-afternoon.
The island was decorated with wildflowers like lavender Joe Pye weed, delicate pale blue forget-me-nots and bright scarlet cardinal flowers against a backdrop of tall green grasses. Brad gave his digital camera a workout while Ben prepared bass fillets coated with cornmeal and spices. We relaxed and feasted and talked about our rainbow trout bite and the beauties of the river we had witnessed: dozens of common mergansers with their russet crowns and delicate beige feathering, a doe and two spotted fawns angling uphill among the trees along the shoreline and one lone bald eagle soaring high overhead in the hazy gray and blue August skies.
We took our canoes out at the first bridge in Warren just as a gentle rain began to fall and headed back to camp, where a crockpot feast of venison roast awaited. We spent Saturday evening lingering over dinner and watching the rain from the covered camp front porch. Sleep came easily and early that night.
Trail Notes: The 7th annual Big Bucks Rendezvous and Wildlife Festival will take place on Sept. 11 and 12 at the Columbia County Fairgrounds in Lisbon, Ohio. Sponsored by Ohio Valley Outdoors magazine, Ohio Valley Outdoor Times and the OVO pro staff, the event will feature a Big Bucks contest, free scoring of deer racks, a taxidermy competition, a turkey-calling contest, a wild-game cook-off, a Kid’s Day fishing clinic, various seminar speakers and more. Call 330-385-2243 for more information.
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.
