Last week, Dupont native Brian Dudzinski and I took a day trip to fish the Lackawaxen River east of the Kimbles Road and Towpath Road intersection. On 402 North, we passed through the Delaware State Forest riding the breaking wave of mountain laurel blooms in the shade of hemlocks. In their wash, elderberries sparkled.
The Lackawaxen River is just over 31 miles in length. Its source is in northwest Wayne County and it joins the Delaware River on its main stem at the Zane Grey pool just north of the town of Lackawaxen.
The Lackawaxen River is fed on its eastern branch by the discharge from the Wallenpaupack Hydroelectric Plant. This makes the river downstream from Powerhouse Road a tailwater fishery. Signage along Towpath Road reads, “Caution, River Level Changes Rapidly,” constant reminders of the river’s unpredictability. Add into the equation recent rains, and the forecast becomes cloudier.
Expecting challenging conditions at best, or a totally blown out river at worst, Dudzinski took certain precautions, most notably a cooler containing several fresh Italian sausage patties from Morgan’s Butcher Shop in Pittston among other rations.
Dudzinski is about as fine a camp cook as they come. He is a man of few words, albeit many solid recipes. I was initially introduced to his stream side culinary skills on a day trip we took with our sons to the Lehigh River a few weeks ago. The venison burgers he made for lunch when the fishing was slow were unforgettable.
When he warned me that we were taking a chance on the Lackawaxen River in light of the recent rains, I was anything but deterred.
I had only one question for Dudz, “you’re bringing the chuck box, right?”
There are many iterations of the chuck box, an age-old camp kitchen assemblage derived from the historic concept of the chuck wagon, a rolling kitchen cowboys used as they ranged across the American West. In this sense, the chuck box is a piece of Americana every rambling hunter and angler needs in some form or another, and that form usually reflects character.
Brian Dudzinski hand-craft his chuck box from pine and used a clear and gold stain resulting in a two-toned finish. He burned a simple caricature landscape scene into the front panel of the box. (T.C. Mazar / Contributing Photographer)
Brian Dudzinski and his son Jase display a Lackawaxen River rainbow trout they landed together. (T.C. Mazar / Contributing Photographer)
Show Caption
1 of 2
Brian Dudzinski hand-craft his chuck box from pine and used a clear and gold stain resulting in a two-toned finish. He burned a simple caricature landscape scene into the front panel of the box. (T.C. Mazar / Contributing Photographer)
Expand
Dudzinski crafted his homemade chuck box from pine wood and finished it by alternating clear and gold stains yielding a two-toned aesthetic. Burned into the creamy wood of the front panel is a simple outdoor caricature scene: three mountains and two pine trees. The top lid flips open and the front panel folds down. Housed inside the box divided with two shelves is Dudzinski’s two-burner stove, fuel, lighter, pot, pan, coffee percolator and a basic spice rack.
Upon our arrival, the Lackawaxen River ran at 381 cubic feet per second according to the seven-day United States Geological Survey discharge graph for that week, about 150 cubic feet per second over the mean average flow. There was no rocky shoreline visible, but the river still seemed somewhat wadable.
What’s important is that after our brief study of the river, Dudz unfolded his Rubbermaid table, unlatched his chuck box, ignited the stove and quickly went to work cooking a breakfast spread that featured the Morgan’s Italian sausage. The patties he paired nicely with corned beef hash, scrambled eggs and rye toast. I felt like a cowboy eating that spread as I watched the morning sun shattering on the river.
On a full stomach and waist deep in the river, I fished a size 8 black wooly bugger below a split shot. My son Tommy casted a Rebel Tennessee shad jerk bait. Dudzinski and his son Jase bounced worms along the bottom. My split shot did its job in towing the wooly bugger down through the water column, enticing a strike from a white sucker. According to the PA Fish and Boat Commission’s publication “Pennsylvania Fishes,” white suckers are bottom feeders, their diet consisting of zooplankton, mollusks, crustaceans and aquatic insects. Maybe my wooly bugger was mistaken for a small crayfish, or a large stonefly. Not long after releasing the white sucker, I hooked into a good rainbow trout, a stocked fish on this river. It was about 10 o’clock in the morning. To be honest, I cared less about what the fish thought my wooly bugger was and more about what Dudz planned for lunch.
Around noon, we moved a few miles downstream to another bend in the river between two riffles. In the narrow roadside pull-off, Dudzinski, the magician that he is, flipped open his magic box and whipped up some sausage and pepper sandwiches served on sesame seed buns, chili dogs on brioche, a side of mac and cheese and black coffee from the percolator. Cars and a few motorcycles passed by in periodic procession, and I imagine they were envious of our paper plates filled with comfort food.
Back on the river, Dudz hooked into three more rainbows and a northern hog nose sucker. The same way he handed us plates of food, he handed off the pole to our boys so that they could reel the fish in.
The northern hog sucker is an interesting indicator species. Despite the misleading name, they are intolerant of muddy or silted water. Northern hog suckers require cold, clean water to thrive. It is profiled in the same chapter of the PAFBC’s “Pennsylvania Fishes” as the white sucker because they both reside in the Catostomidae family. As quality fisheries go, the Lackawaxen River is the pudding, the northern hog sucker is the proof.
I missed two strikes on my wooly bugger and eventually switched to a double nymph rig with a hare’s ear nymph in size 14 followed with a zebra midge in size 18. In spite of the change, it was Dudzinski who landed all the fish this afternoon.
Back on 84 West, Tommy fell asleep on our ride home. I had the windows down to cool the cab of the truck. The sounds of the highway mixed with the memories of the day. Once again, Dudzinski out-fished all of us on the river. On the front passenger floor of my truck was a grocery bag and depending on the angle of sun in relation to the turn in the highway, two tinfoil packages flashed now and then. It took all the patience I had to wait until home to unwrap the leftover sausage and pepper sandwich Duds sent us off with.
“Let him cook” I thought to myself as I unfolded the foil.
T.C. Mazar is a freelance outdoors writer and can be reached at wildlife@scrantontimes.com.