THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408210173
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB HUTCHINSON
LENGTH: Long : 116 lines
Claude Bain, director of the Virginia Salt Water Fishing Tournament, is a man to be pitied, not envied.
On the surface, here's a guy who not only gets paid to go fishing but also is furnished with a nice trailer, motor and boat to go in. Ah, you say, what a life.
Right now, Bain probably would trade places with a lot of you hard-working stiffs.
For one thing, his right hand, Ann Burnett, is on maternity leave for six weeks. So Bain is having to do double duty as tournament director and secretary.
Perhaps even worse, he still has no idea when the 2,500 or so fishermen who earned citation plaques from the 1993 state-sponsored contest will receive their awards. That's right: The 1993 citations still have not been completed.
It's another of those time-saving, money saving computer productions that didn't work.
In the past, a calligrapher hand-lettered the plaques with the angler's name and residence, and the species and weight of catch.
A program was developed to do the lettering by computer. That part of the plan worked fine. The lettering was almost identical to the calligraphy.
The problem surfaced when workmen went to laminate the plaques. The computer lettering went all squiggly. Most were illegible.
Anglers were promised their plaques within 120 days of the close of the tournament in mid-December. That would have been mid-April. None has been delivered.
Bain said it has been the most frustrating thing he has dealt with.
``Right now, I don't know what's going to happen,'' he said. ``In the past, the lamination was done with heat. Now we're trying to cold-laminate the plaques. If it works, we should start getting them out soon.''
Bain said he should know by early September whether the process will be successful.
If not? ``Then we go back to square one and have them hand-lettered again,'' he said. ``In that case, we're looking at another two to three months.''
TOP RODS: Denny Dobbins of Portsmouth leads the angler-of-the-year competition for the 1994 Virginia Salt Water Fishing Tournament with prize-winning catches in seven categories. He also leads in the release-angler-of-the-year competition with five.
Dobbins has registered releases for amberjack, black drum, red drum, sailfish and shark. He also has boated a 5-pound, 10-ounce sea bass and an 11-8 tautog.
Last year's angler of the year, Craig Paige of Virginia Beach, has earned five citations this year, so he trails Dobbins by two. C.L. Marshall III of Pocomoke, Md., leads the non-resident category with citations in four categories.
DUCKY DATES: A basic bag limit of three ducks a day is expected to be approved for Virginia's 1994 waterfowling season when the board of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries meets Thursday and Friday in Richmond.
The agency's staff is expected to recommend a three-part duck season again this year, according to Bob Duncan, head of the wildlife division.
The fall duck flight down the nation's flyways should total about 71 million birds, the biggest migration in several years, waterfowl specialists are predicting.
That would be a 12 million increase over 1993, according to Delta Waterfowl of Illinois, a division of the North American Wildlife Foundation, a private conservation organization. But it still would be 20 million birds fewer than the average fall flight between 1970 and 1979, Delta biologists say.
Scientists credit this fall's increase to an easing of drought conditions on the Canadian prairies, where many waterfowl spend the summer and raise their young.
SHE'S UPSET: Blanche Whittaker of Norfolk is upset, and with good reason. Hungry for fresh spot, she went into a Norfolk supermarket the other day. What she saw in the fresh-fish department was, she said, appalling.
``I picked up a package of spot weighing .99 pounds,'' she said. ``That's less than a pound. I counted and there were six fish in that package. I didn't figure out what the average weigh was, but I know it was less than 3 ounces.
``Why do they let people catch these baby fish? My late Daddy would have raised heck with me if I had come home with something like that. No wonder we have so few fish left.''
DEAN, TOO: Bob Dean, a member of the Virginia Beach City Council, is upset about the state of the nation's fishery resources and plans to do something about it.
He is bringing ``Fish Tour '94'' to Hampton Roads. Aimed at getting the general public involved in fishery matters, the focal point of the program is a 20-minute film, ``U.S. Fisheries in Crisis,'' narrated by actress Elizabeth Perkins.
``This is a must-see for our waterfront communities,'' Dean said. ``Recent studies have shown that our own Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean are indeed stressed resources.
``The only way we can make the fishery managers and the politicians aware of the seriousness of the situation is through a grass-roots effort. This is something that affects us all.''
SHORT CASTS: Duck-hunting dates for 1994 in North Carolina will be discussed at a public hearing at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the North Carolina Aquarium at Manteo. The Wildlife Resouces Commission has the option of a 30-day season with a four-duck bag limit or a 40-day season with a three-duck limit. . . . Gary Harvey of Chesapeake won a trophy at the recent Virginia Deer Classic in Mechanicsville for a 9-point deer bagged last fall in Northumberland County. The rack scored 167 4/16 points, with 140 needed to qualify. He plans to enter his big buck in the 55th annual Virginia Big Game Contest. The event's eastern regionals will be held Sept. 10-11 at James Blair Middle School, 117 Ironbound Road, Williamsburg. The western regionals and state championship are set for Sept. 24-25 at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds near Harrisonburg. Competition is open to deer, bear and turkey trophies. . . . Of the 374 largemouth bass caught during the recent BASS Masters Classic on High Rock Lake in North Carolina, 97.6 percent were returned alive to the lake. . . . Rick Morris of Virginia Beach and Woo Daves of Spring Grove are the Virginians entered in the $270,000 Bassmaster Top 100 tournament, which opens Wednesday on Lake St. Clair at Mount Clemens, Mich. Top prize is $45,000. . . . Tom Elkins was paid $500 to display the mount of his world-record 1-pound, 5-ounce Roanoke bass at the National Bluegill Club's museum in Louisville, Ky. The fish was caught on the Nottoway River. Formerly of Portsmouth, Elkins lives in Northern Virginia. by CNB