Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991 TAG: 9103170013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The bigger streams, the Roanoke River an example, were fast and unfriendly, bloated by recent rains.
Jennings Creek, flowing off the timbered ridges of the Jefferson National Forest in Botetourt County, was unruffled - near perfect. That's where Mark Ellis opened the season.
He would have been there, anyway, no matter what the water conditions or the weather. He makes the drive every year from his home in Rocky Mount.
"I don't mind paying my $21.50 [license fee] just to be out here a few minutes," he said. "It is well worth it."
A few minutes was all it took Saturday.
Ellis molded orange Power Bait onto his hook, and inside 20 minutes it had disappeared into the gaping mouths of six trout, his limit. One was a chunky 16-inch brook trout, its broad, silky sides bearing dark, wavy lines and a peppering of red spots with blue aureoles.
His partner, Charlie McCrady, netted it for him.
"It's almost big enough to put on a board," said Ellis.
Standing next to Ellis, in a pool that had attracted 43 fishermen, were Bobby and Carrie Waller, husband and wife from Altavista.
As a welcomed sun added sparkle to the pool, he landed a limit and she caught three, letting a fourth squirt from her hand like a wet cake of soap.
It was a frosty morning, and the glacier-green water was bone-numbing cold. Some of it had been snow only a couple days earlier. It quickly could turn an angler's hands to the color of the shrimp salmon eggs that Carrie Waller used.
Chris Eakes of Roanoke warmed up rapidly when he wrestled the first trout from a Jennings Creek pool. The fat, scrappy brookie wasn't just the first of the day - for Eakes it was the first ever.
"Frying-pan size," said his stepfather, Ray Belcher.
While big brook trout were delighting fishermen on Jennings Creek, it was jumbo browns that were the talk of the Roanoke River.
At All Huntin-N-Fishin Store in Salem, Howard Wilson of Salem was still shaking when tackle shop owner Lacy All weighed the 6-pound, 7-ounce brown he'd hooked on corn. Chris Thompson of Salem got a 5-pound, 4-ounce brown. Marlowe Jeter of Salem used Power Bait to fool a 4 1/2-pound rainbow.
The steady stream of citation-size Roanoke River trout that were dipping All's scales weren't an accurate measure of how tough the fishing really was, he said.
"The river is hard to fish right now. The rookies aren't catching them. But they are in here."
For Robert Daniel of Roanoke, who likes to cast his Joe's Flies well past opening day, there was a certain satisfaction in the lightness of creels.
"That's good, because the fish are still in there, and they are going to be in there for awhile."
by CNB