There's a stretch of the fork that fishes especially well for spotted bass as well as smallmouth. River left looking upstream is bounded by a high cliff, in most places its covered in trees and bushes but you would need to rope up to feel anywhere near safe. But about a half mile up from the bridge I park at a creek has cut a narrow passage into the steep walls. On the topo map the creek seems to appear as two forks seemingly forming out of nowhere on flat farmland. The contour lines almost touching for a quarter mile above the fork. No rainwater would cut such a notch this has to be a product of torrents of melting glacier water raging at the end of the last ice age. Well it's one of those places a ginseng hunter files away in the back of his mind to check out one day. Friday was the day. Sure enough, wild ginger, goldenseal and maidenhair fern greeted me as soon as climbed up from the fork. Big trees, trees you couldn't reach around in most places covered the slopes. And they were beech and maple, things were looking good. Then I saw a nice three prong ginseng plant and then just beyond another. And then right out in the open a dozen plants. I finished my water bottle sitting beside that patch and then turned and left. This fall, with a lunch and a digger packed in my pack, I'll spend at least a day here learning this little hollow inside and out. It was a good start to my weekend.
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