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Bluestone Lake Summers County WV

Started by WV Sawmiller, October 11, 2020, 03:20:33 PM

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WV Sawmiller

 

 I'm tired of visitors stealing Sampson's food off the porch so I reset my box trap out there and had this guy this morning.

They'd be a lot move loveable and photogenic if they just had a furry tail  

 Times must be too good when we can afford to turn loose a fat possum instead of having him for Sunday dinner.


 I hope he's a history buff because this is where I turned him loose.


 Underneath this bridge over Highway 20 the local Bluestone River ends when it meets the New River flowing north from NC and through VA about a mile above the Corps of Engineer dam built around 1949 for flood control purposes. They make up the Bluestone Lake. If the picture were enlarged you could just see part of the dam on the right side of the river below. You can barely see the little concrete dock at the boat landing on Pits Road below. The bank has a pretty gentle slope and most of us just launch our boats directly into the lake most anywhere for about a 1/4 mile strip around the bend below. The Pits Road landing is 8.5 miles from my house so it is pretty convenient for me to use.


 The mountain and point across the lake where the New River turns is about 20' deep or so and up from the point for about 1/4 mile is one of my prime catfish holes for limblines. The leaves are turning now but hard to appreciate with this small camera and a hazy day.


 Down below is the mouth of a creek and our local Marina. Is is all part of Bluestone Park, a WV State park. The marina has slips for probably 100 or more boats and is contracted out every year or so. The boats, docks and floating store building will be pulled up and anchored on higher ground when the store closes next week (15 Oct) as this whole area will get floods 20' or more higher this winter. The creek at the marina is pretty good crappie fishing and bluegills and such tend to hang out under the boats a lot. The water at normal level is typically 3-4 feet deep and maybe 6' against the rock wall on the other side. It is very common to see Canada Geese, Blue herons, Little Green Herons, Ospreys and Bald Eagle in this area. You are liable to spot a deer or bear swimming across the lake, see mink, coons and otters running the banks, find beaver lodges along the banks an chewed up willow limbs, and if you are lucky you might spot a deer in belly deep water with its head under water eating the submerged grasses in the lake like the northern moose cousins.


 A little deeper up in the marina.


 Mouth of the creek at the Marina and around the bend north up the New River side.


 Further up the New River view


 Details about the Lilly Bridge over the Bluestone River on WV Highway 20 that was rebuilt a few years back.


 Details about the village/town of Lilly now under the waters of Bluestone Lake. A few miles upstream is Bull Falls, also now under the lake. It was named after a bull washed over and drowned or at least that is the tale I heard. Great fishing up there and I used to catch a lot of big catfish there till I realized I could catch just as many right here at and around the landing and save a 20-25 minute jonboat ride up the river a couple times a day.

 About 1/4 mile below the COE dam the Greenbrier River also merges with the New River. The Greenbrier remains uncontrolled so when we have heavy flooding they hold back water a few days in the lake to let the waters from the Greenbrier go and hopefully before the lake gets too full the Greenbrier will start to ebb so the people downstream (Charleston, etc) don't get the flood waters from both at the same time.

 There is a big seismic fault right under the Bluestone Dam (which makes you question the reasoning for the location) and has been undergoing reinforcement repairs and upgrades for several years and several more till it is finished. The water flowing through the gates of the dam have never been used to generate electricity (Hydro power is not a politically correct option is a coal mining state like WV after all) but there is an option to do so in conjunction with the on-going repairs and upgrades.

 I am told the New River flowing through the Bluestone Lake is listed as the second oldest river in the world behind the Nile and some folks wonder if it really isn't the oldest. Both the Nile and the New Rivers are among the few that flow north.

 The Bluestone Lake and its tributaries are great fishing, get a lot of skiing and jet skis and such and this time of year provide a really great view of the leaves turning and colorful Fall foliage.
Howard Green
WM LT35HDG25(2015) , 2011 4WD F150 Ford Lariat PU, Kawasaki 650 ATV, Stihl 440 Chainsaw, homemade logging arch (w/custom built rear log dolly), JD 750 w/4' wide Bushhog brand FEL

Dad always said "You can shear a sheep a bunch of times but you can only skin him once

Walnut Beast

Sounds like you took him to paradise. Nice story and pictures 

WV Sawmiller

   I can assure you he made out much better than the last one who made a quick and final trip to Happy Mountain. He is actually only a few hundred yards above the marina. 
Howard Green
WM LT35HDG25(2015) , 2011 4WD F150 Ford Lariat PU, Kawasaki 650 ATV, Stihl 440 Chainsaw, homemade logging arch (w/custom built rear log dolly), JD 750 w/4' wide Bushhog brand FEL

Dad always said "You can shear a sheep a bunch of times but you can only skin him once

Ianab

Quote from: WV Sawmiller on October 11, 2020, 03:20:33 PMThey'd be a lot move loveable and photogenic if they just had a furry tail


We have the Australian version here, which has much nicer fur, including on their tail. They actually are quite cute, friend even has a pet one.

But you DO NOT want them running wild. :D
They eat anything they can get their paws on, have no predators here, and cost a fortune to control. 
Weekend warrior, Peterson JP test pilot, Dolmar 7900 and Stihl MS310 saws and  the usual collection of power tools :)

WV Sawmiller

Ian,

   I thought the possums down under had furry tails and they are more attractive than ours. Ours are actually quite cute when small but they grow out of it. :D We had a young one we were raising years ago that we named "Eatmore" after the famous southern tag/bumper sticker "Eat More Possum". Ours also eat anything and everything they can get. They are often called ground buzzards around here as you often find them around dead animals and road kills and such.

   There is no market for their fur now but that is also true for coons and even deer hides are hardly worth saving to sell but that is just our market conditions. As a kid there would be local black residents who would buy them to eat but they wanted them whole as they usually dipped them in hot water and scraped the hair off and ate the hide too. 
Howard Green
WM LT35HDG25(2015) , 2011 4WD F150 Ford Lariat PU, Kawasaki 650 ATV, Stihl 440 Chainsaw, homemade logging arch (w/custom built rear log dolly), JD 750 w/4' wide Bushhog brand FEL

Dad always said "You can shear a sheep a bunch of times but you can only skin him once

Don P

This is a little on the old history of the river;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teays_River
I've seen some maps with it circling all the way around part of the Missouri watershed and coming back into what would become the Mississippi valley around St Louis.

Magicman

Different area Howard but you brought back memories of the New River Gorge Bridge.
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It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

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Skip

I spent a month camping at Bluestone when I got out of Corps in 75 . Traded catfish for little boat rental and ice at that very marina . Good times. Thanks Howard .( Possums are tick eaten machines .) Took my wife there first time she had ever been camping . :) ;D

WV Sawmiller

Lynn,

  I think they have canceled Bridge Day over the Highway 19 bridge near Fayetteville this year due to the pandemic. We used to have a 2 weekend street festival (Railroad Days) here where we'd shut off main street and bring special sight-seeing trains, sometime steam engines when available, from up around Huntington WV and through the New River Valley stopping at certain points for people to take pictures of the Fall Foliage then terminate here in Hinton for a few hours to let the passengers get off and spend money then return. It brought a lot of money to the community. Lots of folks would go to Bridge day on Saturday then come to Hinton on Sunday of the first weekend of Train Days as we always called them. They would close one side of the 4 lane highway and allow people to jump off the bridge hang gliding and parachuting. I think they even bungy jumped a truck off at one point.

 My landlord in Norway's Father In Law was an adventure junky and had come from Kristiansand Norway over and jumped off the bridge so it is a well known and international event.

Skip,

  They have nearly doubled the size of the Marina since we have lived here. I guess they open it up for contract bids every 2-3 years. It is convenient to run grab a pack of nabs and a sody water when you get too hot on the lake or get some more minnows or worms or such as needed. People up here have not yet figured out selling crickets for fishbait yet. Maybe that is my next niche market. Probably because of the huge mayfly hatches when it is hard to find a square foot of lake surface without a dead mayfly or his shell. Probably because there are so many small fish knocking them off before the bigger ones find them.

  There is lots of camping here at Bluestone Park where you stayed. Did you stay inside the main park or at one of the dozen or so camping spots on the other side of the lake accessible only by boat? Pipestem park about 10 miles further away has good camping, cabins, a lodge, stables and golf course and now the longest zip line east of the Mississippi. It brings in lots of tourists. The COE has a campground up at Bull Falls but my favorite is Bertha Campground down Seminole Road. It has over 300 camping spots as I remember and many are right on the lake so you can launch a boat then tie it up right in front of your tent or camper where you can watch it and not have to load and unload every time you want to fish. The county took over management of it from the DNR a couple years ago . Turns out DNR is not allowed to run campgrounds and an astute accountant got to wondering about this extra income reporting.

  Anyway, the next time y'all come down give me a holler and we'll have a fish fry or roast some weinies or such.
Howard Green
WM LT35HDG25(2015) , 2011 4WD F150 Ford Lariat PU, Kawasaki 650 ATV, Stihl 440 Chainsaw, homemade logging arch (w/custom built rear log dolly), JD 750 w/4' wide Bushhog brand FEL

Dad always said "You can shear a sheep a bunch of times but you can only skin him once

Skip

I stayed in the park down at the bottom near the creek I believe it is or was closed due to a lot of flooding . Was a road along the hillside to get down there. We got flooded out down there once :o, I believe somebody around Hinton drowned.  Late 70'S we got married in 77. We stayed at the lodge in Pipestem once, below the tram, been years ago

WV Sawmiller

Skip,

   When I first moved here it seemed like we would have 5-6 people drown every year. Mostly it was below the dam in the river where they would be wade fishing and slip on a slick rock in heavy current. Often they would drown in 2' of water with the water pressure pushing them under face down. Several years ago I helped rescue a lady there at the boat dock at the mouth of the creek there in Bluestone Park, probably just below where you camped. They had a set of concrete steps made into a steep bank where the handicapped fishing pier is located (Burned by vandals and rebuilt a couple years ago - about 1/4 mile below the park store) and I guess she hit her head on the steps. She was floundering badly and her husband or boyfriend jumped in and grabbed her and was holding her head out of the water. I was fishing at my crappie smokehouse a couple hundred feet away and motored over to help and a couple of kayakers saw us and came to help. She was a big lady and we had a heck of a time getting her up the steps. We should have just put my spare life jacket on her and towed her around the bend to the boat landing 100' away and dragged up up the gentle slope there. The bad thing was she was in water 3-4 feet deep and could have stood up and walked out at any time if she had not panicked. If we had not been there she certainly would have drowned. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and she was just grabbing like swimming. Her partner started lightly slapping her face and when she came to she said "Quit slapping me" and after that she was conscious and okay. 
Howard Green
WM LT35HDG25(2015) , 2011 4WD F150 Ford Lariat PU, Kawasaki 650 ATV, Stihl 440 Chainsaw, homemade logging arch (w/custom built rear log dolly), JD 750 w/4' wide Bushhog brand FEL

Dad always said "You can shear a sheep a bunch of times but you can only skin him once

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