Hi guys,
To clarify, I'm not a member of this TU as I live pretty far away, I try to direct info about their events if I don't see it on here.
At any rate, just wanted to provide a bit more information for you all about potential places to stay if you are interested in this event or ever stopping by the river on the way to the Delaware or Salmon River. There are a lot of eateries in the area and there is a movie theater, skiing, concerts, and shopping at Montage Mountain. So you may be able to make it a family trip if you ever go. May be a water park in summer too, not sure.
In my opinion, it is a destination fishery, however, some of the access is a bit tricky, and even I haven't figured out all of the upper river access(Simpson area, private property on one side) after many visits. But that same slight difficulty in access provides very unique opportunities to pull 18-24 inchers(fish in sizes you can usually encounter, fish up to 30 have been seen, and fish up to 28 have been caught) out of odd little places people can't easily access.
The Radisson Hotel in central Scranton is a very nice hotel, a bit more expensive though. http://www.radisson.com/scranton-hotel-pa-18503/pascrant
It is a non-smoking facility and is about 8 miles I'm guessing to the BBQ in Dickson City. It is a good location if you plan on fishing the middle and lower river(Taylor access, the rail to trails should be open down there now for access).
There are also hotels on Montage Mountain which is in Moosic, before Scranton. There is a nice Marriott on this mountain and a few others as listed here http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g53233-Moosic_Pennsylvania-Hotels.html#MAPVIEW.
And then there is Dickson City which has a mall area and hotels that is about 4 miles, I'm guessing, from the BBQ, and about 1.5 to the river. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g52495-Dickson_City_Pennsylvania-Hotels.html
And, lastly, here is an active TU member of this chapter slamming into some hogs on video. I am guessing this chap is pro river exposure, because his vids explicitly state Lackawanna River. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUqGZ2_lAvI
I am pro exposure as well, because this river has hundreds of businesses, many of them industrial in nature along its length. It runs through the Lackawanna Valley and the Lackawanna River Heritage Authority is completing a rails to trails that as far as I can tell they got millions of dollars in grants to build.
So...they kind of have a vested interest in the piece de resistance, the river, being clean. There is so much promise, but at the same time there is degradation of the river right now that could be stopped if just few more people joined the fight.
The more people on the river, hopefully ethical people, the better, in my opinion. Case in point: One day I was fishing the Trophy Trout section in the winter, and two guys parked right at the same time I did- one mumbled "We picked a bad day to come" as he saw my fly rod.
Keep in mind trophy trout is no bait. They had worms, and they still had the audacity to fish directly across stream from me and attempted to poach 2, yes 2, 20 inch fish. I looked at them, they looked at the fish, then their stringers, and decided to throw the fish back. They told me they drove an hour to fish, so they may have not come back to get those fish.
