Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 1, 1995 TAG: 9506010052
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Striped bass out of Kerr Lake dumped their cargo of eggs and milt quickly into the Roanoke River this spring and headed back downstream, where they are being caught across a wide section of the lake.
It was a short spawning season, one of the briefest Steve Arthur can remember in 22 years of employment at the state hatchery in Brookneal.
``We had a pretty dry spring,'' said Arthur, who is the hatchery manager. ``The river was low. The fish just spawned and moved out early. They were pretty well gone the week of May 22-26.''
In a cool, wet year, the run can extend into early June. This time, many of the fish didn't even bother to migrate upstream as far as Brookneal.
``We had to go 15 miles downstream to catch fish'' for hatchery use, Arthur said.
Locating the kind of female spawners ideal for hatchery production was difficult on many days.
``We didn't get to pick and choose the females like we do in a normal year,'' Arthur said.
The hatchery should be able to produce plenty of fingerlings for stocking in Smith Mountain Lake and other impoundments, but just for insurance a load of 250,000 fry is being trucked to Brookneal from a Tennessee hatchery today, Arthur said.
``That is the first time I every remember going out of the state for fish,'' Arthur said.
FAT TROUT: A brown trout caught at Lake Moomaw by Mark Gregory of Covington was shaped a good bit like a chunk of two-by-six. It weighed 61/4 pounds but measured only 21 inches. It usually takes a 25-inch fish to weigh 5 pounds.
Moomaw has been turning out a good numbers of 3- to 4-pound trout.
Following a lull in its production of jumbo-size largemouth bass, Briery Creek Lake gave up a 13-pound-plus catch for Randy Jones of Farmville. The fish, which measured nearly 30 inches, hit a plastic worm.
ATTENTION-GETTER: Virginia's Chesapeake Bay striped bass season has been yielding impressive fishing, but the Virginia Marine Resources Commission says angling interest has been surprisingly light.
That may change, however, thanks to 12-year-old Devin Nolan. The seventh-grader was fishing aboard his dad's 22-foot boat in the Maryland end of the bay when a 67-pound, 8-ounce striped bass struck his chartreuse bucktail lure. The fish is a record for Maryland, and should put Virginia anglers on notice that the spring-early summer striper season in the bay offers huge targets.
The Maryland fish are destined to fin through Virginia's end of the bay on their journey from their spawning grounds to the ocean.
Good numbers of stripers already are in the Smith Point area off Reedville, said Roger Willkins, who operates Jetts Hardware in Reedville.
``They have been producing very well the last couple of days,'' he said Wednesday. ``Most anglers are chumming for them, but those who are trolling are catching fewer but bigger fish.''
The Virginia season continues through June 15.
PRINCE OF A LAKE: Lake Prince isn't a big body of water, just 777 acres that serve the City of Norfolk as a water supply. It is best known for huge landlocked striped bass, some of them mashing the scales past the 30-pound mark.
Now it has a new source of fame as home of the state-record white perch. Jimmy Roper of Portsmouth recently was dunking a red wiggler in Prince when he hooked a 2-pound, 8-ounce white perch that measured 15 inches. That topped the previous record, a 2-pound, 1-ounce fish from Back Bay taken in April 1987.
by CNB