Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 4, 1991 TAG: 9104040018
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Anytime the level of the 50,000-acre lake goes over 300 feet, it floods the shoreline willows, buck bushes and sweet gums, and that sets the stage for outstanding bass fishing.
The water level and the bass-catch rate have a way of rising in unison, and all the better if the water temperature happens to be going in the same direction.
Kerr largemouth fishermen should enjoy several weeks of excellent action, but crappie fishermen will pay a price. The same high water that creates an abundance of food and cover for bass can scatter schooling crappie.
When the water is in the willows, the trick for catching bass is to get your lure right back in there with the fish. It is no time to be timid, said Jim Abers, a lake guide.
Four lures that can get the job done are spinnerbaits-buzzbaits, jigs, grubs-worms and surface plugs.
While high water is good for bass anglers at Kerr, it is disruptive to warm-water stream fishermen. Rivers like the New, James, Shenandoah, Clinch and Rappahannock have been full and discolored, and at a time when smallmouth traditionally becoming active.
Even some trout streams, the Roanoke River one of them, have had a tad too much flow and color for the best sport. When the water is up, minnows can be an excellent trout offering, said Robert Elmore, of All Huntin'-N-Fishin' Store in Salem.
"We hardly can keep them in stock" the demand is so great, said Elmore.
Fishermen are reporting excellent largemouth action at Briery Creek Lake, the public impoundment near Farmville. Minnows, worms and spinnerbaits are hooking bass in water 4 to 8 feet deep.
Claytor Lake was beginning to produce some good crappie fishing until the rain came. At Gaston Lake, early morning fishermen are hooking bass on topwater plugs and buzzbaits, then switching to deeper-running offerings.
At Smith Mountain, fishermen are reporting catches of stripers and black bass, some bragging size. Several 7-pound largemouths have been landed, and Steve Boyer of Glade Hill got a 4-pound, 6-ounce smallmouth. Fallon Arthur of Roanoke landed a 30-pound striper on bait and Barry Ratcliff of Roanoke got a 28-pounder on a Bomber lure.
Along the Outer Banks of North Carolina, surf fishing for blues has been disappointing, and the prospects for improvement aren't favorable.
"I don't like this," said Damon Tatem, who operates a Nags Head tackle shop.
What he didn't like was that some blues apparently already have shot north and are off Maryland, which means they not only bypassed the Carolina surf but Virginia's Chesapeake Bay as well.
The last spurt of productive fishing along the sandy shores of the Outer Banks occurred Sunday, when a school of speckled trout kept fishermen busy near Kitty Hawk Pier.
Offshore, the fishing is excellent, although few anglers are around to take advantage of it. Limits of tuna are being landed out of Oregon Inlet and Hatteras.
Dave Lawson of Roanoke sailed out of Hatteras aboard the charter boat Good Times and landed a citation catch-and-release sailfish.
"I've been looking for one for 15 years," he said. It was the season's first trip for the boat's skipper, Capt. B.D. Wilson, the first bite of the year and the first sailfish of '91.
Lawson and his partners, Willie Cyers, Carl Lawson Jr. and Bill Sowers, also caught 19 husky tuna.
April is an excellent time to hook tuna off North Carolina, even though anglers have to deal with occasional adverse weather, Tatem said. Virtually no sport fishermen go after them this time of the year, so the charter boats go alone and sell what they catch.
"When the parties pick up the fishing drops off," he said.
by CNB