Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003222377
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And the rain tried its best, too.
It fell heavily prior to the 9 o'clock starting hour, and by late morning many of the trout steams had turned the color of coffee with a little cream in it. By mid-afternoon, the National Weather Service in Roanoke was issuing small stream and urban flood warnings.
It was a rain that defied the best of foul weather gear. The folds of ponchos became down spouts that sent water parading past sensitive body parts. The squishy cargo terminated in the bottom of boots, where socks turned to sponges and feet turned to prunes.
On the Roanoke River in Salem, it was tough to tell who was wetter, James Blankenship or the trout he was casting to in a swirling pool on the lee side of a bridge.
"I think I should have bought a raincoat," said Blankenship, who lives in Elliston.
Instead, he had spent his money on the hot, new Power Bait, a paste-like concoction the color of Bazooka bubble gun that he molded onto his No. 8 hook. While the trout weren't so aggressive that Blankenship had to turn his back on the pool when he baited his hook, they came to the bait steadily. He had his limit of six in 45 minutes.
His brother, Andy, and father, Harold, beat that. Fishing 100 yards upstream, they took limits quickly on a black Joe's Fly that had a whirling silver spinner blade about the size of a little finger nail.
"They were tearing it up," said Harold.
Hunter Cunningham of Salem reeled in one of the top fish of the day, a 4-pound, 7-ounce rainbow taken from the Roanoke River in Salem.
Farther down stream, in the Wiley Drive section, the water turned nasty quickly.
"I got here at 8 o'clock and it had a little tint to it," said Calvin Andrews of Vinton, who was casting from a low-water bridge. "It started getting worse by the minute."
Andrews managed to land three trout before a torrent of muddy water cut his fun short.
Just down stream from Andrews, below the Franklin Road Bridge, Chase Potter, 12, of Roanoke and Wes Overstreet, 21, of Botetourt County waded across the river to fish from an island.
They had the place to themselves, caught two trout and were thinking Thoreauvian thoughts when they suddenly realized the river had quickened its pace to a disquieting gallop. They couldn't get back across.
The Roanoke Life Saving and First Aid Crew had to position ropes across the river and guide the two fishermen to safety.
In Botetourt County, where Jennings Creek winds vine-like out of the ridges of the Jefferson National Forest, the water came up with startling speed. Under normal conditions, it is easy to wax eloquent about the budding wildflowers, distant drumming grouse and mayfly hatches of Jennings, but Saturday the creek was singing a different tune.
"It was just roaring," said Sgt. Dennis Mullins, a state game warden. "It was at flood stage. They may have had a half-hour of good fishing. After that the water started picking up limbs and stuff."
One Jennings Creek fisherman said he didn't see a single trout caught. Some anglers moved to nearby North Creek and took limits.
Tinker Creek, in the east end of Roanoke, got high, too, and appeared to turn green, as if the St. Patrick's Day parade had been re-routed along its course.
"Tinker had a lot of moss or green algae coming down it. Everybody was complaining about that," said Warden Robert George.
Swaddled in a rainbow of foul-weather gear - yellow, blaze orange, red, green, camouflage, white, blue - fishermen turned out in heavy numbers early Saturday to laugh at one another's misfortune, but the humor rapidly grew stale when the water came up and the fish shut down. Twenty minutes into the season, some had called it quits, even through trout fishing probably is better than anything else you can do in the rain.
"We saw very few fish caught," said R.B. Jenkins, a state warden who worked Maggodee and Green creeks in Franklin County. "We counted four fishermen on Green Creek about 3 p.m."
By then, the creek was so high and discolored that even industrial strength Power Bait couldn't pull a fish from the rush of water.
That should mean an uncommon number of trout left in the streams past opening day, said Capt. Bill Nance, a state game warden.
"The fishing should be excellent the rest of the week," he said.
What's more, restocking begins as early as Tuesday.
by CNB