Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992 TAG: 9203310056
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Even dime-size rain drops, which sting her face like grains of sand blasted from a shotgun, aren't enough to dampen her enthusiasm.
She leans over so her companion can hear her above the rush of wind and rain.
"I just got tired of fluorescent lights, and I love watching the sun come up," she said.
Franceschini is a fishing guide, the first woman in the profession on Smith Mountain Lake, one of maybe three on the inland waters of Virginia.
"I just really love it," she said.
Not everyone shares her enthusiasm. At least, not at first.
One morning last week, Mark Kirby climbed aboard Franceschini's boat, his jaws tight with anger. His buddies were snickering.
Kirby and several co-workers from DuPont had traveled from Richmond for a day of fishing with Spike Franceschini, who operates a striped bass guiding service called Spike's Prime Time Fishin'. It is the outfit that accounted for the 42-pound, 6-ounce state record striper May 3, 1988.
Spike's boat wouldn't hold everybody, so half the group would have to go with his new guide - Kathy.
Kathy, Spike's wife, is an accomplished angler, a U.S. Coast Guard licensed boat operator, but she still can detect animosity in the eyes of some of the male clients who climb into her boat for the first time.
"I didn't want to go," said Kirby.
He and his friends had drawn straws to see who would fish with Spike. When he lost - or thought he had - his buddies laughed and promised they'd switch at noon.
A few hours and a couple of striped bass later, Kathy had won a convert.
"She taught me more about striped bass than I every thought I'd learn from anybody," said Kirby.
Switch boats? No way.
"They never abandoned her," said Spike.
Some of the regulars at Camper's Paradise, where the Franceschinis take a mid-day break, like to raze Spike.
"When you goin' change the name to Kathy's Prime Time Fishin'?" they call out.
Kathy frequently hears a more serious question: "What's your biggest problem as a woman guide?"
It isn't, by the way, what to do with a couple guys on your open boat who have had too much coffee to drink. It's the same problem that every fisherman faces, she says. Catching fish.
"That is the only stress you have, getting the illusive striper to hit."
Spike's Prime Time Fishin' took root about eight years ago when Spike became possessed with catching striped bass. At every opportunity, he would drive to Smith Mountain from Northern Virginia, where he operated a popular restaurant called Horsefeathers.
When word got around that he had become an accomplished angler, people begged to tag along. "I'll share the expenses," some said.
"Being the businessman that he is, Spike said: `Hey! I could make a living at this,'" said Kathy.
So five years ago he rented a trailer at the Campers Paradise and began a guide service during the prime spring and fall fishing periods, when leg-long stripers are on maximum alert, stalking the shallows for baitfish. Kathy operated the restaurant.
She described herself as a legal secretary with "high heels and painted fingernails" who walked into Horsefeathers one evening "and fell in love with Spike at first sight."
She was working in the restaurant the night the chef quit.
"So I learned to cook 31 entrees, feed 200 people in a night and put on 15 pounds."
Early this month, Horsefeathers was sold. Spike and Kathy moved to Smith Mountain Lake, buying a house on Paradise Point, just behind Easy Street, where Spike's Prime Time Fishin' is a full-time affair.
"It probably was the smartest move we ever made," said Kathy.
She now handles Spike's overflow business and is developing her own clients.
She had faith that she could locate and catch fish. As a youngster, her dad taught her to handle a boat and fishing rod on the Potomac. Spike schooled her on the movements and moods of stripers, and when he was involved with customers she was the student of Fells Lam, a Brethren minister who has spent his retirement prefecting bait fishing techniques.
"I knew I wanted to fish, but I wasn't certain I could cut the schedule," she said. "It is a minimum nine-hour day, and usually 10 or 11. It is as hard as anything I have done, the physical part of being out here. But I have gotten a lot stronger."
When she runs into old friends and tells them she is a full-time fishing guide, they often express disbelief.
"Just look how rough my hands are," she tells them, thrusting out fingers pricked by knife-like fins and rasped by the sandpaper lips of striped bass, like the 19-pounder she netted on the rainy morning last week.
In early June, Spike and Kathy plan their first get-away trip of the year.
What do guides do on vacation? "We are going to Florida to fish for tarpon," said Kathy.
by CNB