Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992 TAG: 9203240164
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"S--- a-- little piece of s---," murmured the disappointed angler. He slid a hook from the mouth of a scrawny little trout - runt of its litter - and set the fish back into Tinker Creek. It swam away after dodging a few sheets of paper towels soaking in the water.
Here, near the corner of 13th Street and Masons Mill Road in Northeast Roanoke, plastic trash bags cling to tree branches. The skeletal remains of Styrofoam coolers jut from the mud. Beer cans clog the thicket.
Trout fishing in America.
It isn't what Orvis and Anheuser-Busch make it out to be. Not here, not on this, the third day of Virginia's trout season.
There loom no snow-capped summits. There graze no elk nearby. There crackles no campfire.
And these trout are not wily, skulking behind rocks, flinching at shadows on the water's surface. We're not talking about those storied battles between the savvy angler and the wary fish.
We're talking about fish that would bite bubble gum on paper clips if it were dangled before them.
"The fish are stupid," admits Gary Martel. "They're looking for someone to pitch something in the stream for them to eat."
These fish were raised at the state's six hatcheries, plumped on Purina Trout Chow, or some such feed without fear of predator or hook. Brook trout are easiest to catch. Next come the rainbows. Finally, the untrusting but still dumb brown.
Within the past two weeks, 325,000 trusting trout were loaded into trucks, driven to one of 39 Western Virginia creeks and rivers, and released to the wild.
Martel, who oversees the state's stockwide stocking for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, won't say how many fish go in which river. Gets too political, you understand. Sparks too much petty bickering.
On Saturday, trout season opened. Presumably armed with their $12 Virginia fishing licenses, and their $6.50 trout fishing permits, about 100,000 people hit the shores.
They wield not masterfully tied fishing flies but the bait of choice: corn, usually from a can of Green Giant or Del Monte. Trout just can't get enough Niblets.
Many urban anglers were still at it by midday Monday, hoping to land the big one by plopping their lines into the slow-moving pools of water in the Tinker, the Roanoke and the Glade - the three big trout waters in the Roanoke Valley.
The sh-- a-- little piece of s--- were about all what they could expect just 60 hours after the season opened.
"The fishermen are very thorough," says Martel. "People really work over some of the little streams. They'll get 95 percent of the fish in just a couple of days."
Besides, any fish that's avoided simmering butter this long has likely been hooked a couple of times. His mouth is sore, his ancestry is welling within his pea-sized trout brain. Suddenly, those Niblets look less appetizing.
Trout season. It's not a bad thing and its participants aren't bad people. It recognizes that the masses may not always be able to get to the trout, and so it takes the trout to the masses.
But there's something pathetic about dumping fish in a river and then plucking them out, one by one, with hooks.
by CNB