FISHING GUIDES LONG FOR RETURN OF COLD WEATHER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 7, 1993                   TAG: 9301070111
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Bill Cochran Staff Writer
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
FISHING GUIDES LONG FOR RETURN OF COLD WEATHER
Lewis Ratliff hasn't been happy with the January warming trend. He'd like to see colder weather.
No, Ratliff doesn't operate a ski resort or sell snowmobiles. He is a fishing guide on Smith Mountain Lake.
"I like it when the back of the coves freeze over and I can throw my bait onto the ice and slide it off the edge of the ice into the water," he said. "I've had some of my best fishing then."
Ice has been a scarce commodity for several winters, but Ratliff said there has been enough cold weather this season to send baitfish back into the coves and creeks.
"The stripers are going to follow the bait," he said. "The shad are back in the coves, plumb thick."
When the stripers leave the deep, open water and move into the creeks, they become easier for most anglers to locate. They feed on or near the surface and can be caught with top-water or shallow-running lures.
The trick is to know which cove to head your boat into, said guide Bob King.
Most of the shallow-water action occurs during a brief flurry right at daylight, so if you select the wrong cove you've squandered the day's best action.
"You might go into a cove and they will be there one day and not the next," King said. "If you pick the wrong cove in the morning, you don't have much time to go to another one. It is a guessing game. Occasionally you will get into a good group of fish and just have a ball."
Dale Wilson, the dean of guides on the lake, has had some days like that this winter, until the last couple of mild ones appeared to shut down the action for everyone.
In Wilson's mind, the water temperature is more important than the air temperature. One mild day last week he and three companions hooked 16 stripers.
"I've found 47- to 50-degree water," said Wilson. "That is a good temperature. I think we are going to have some real good fishing as long as the water stays above 42 degrees."
The baitfish have made their annual migration up the lake and are beginning to move back downstream, Wilson and Ratliff report.
Wilson finds his best success comes just before a front whistles through. For a couple days after a front, the fishing can be tough.
While others probe well back into the creeks for stripers, Wilson said he has his best results closer to the mouth of major creeks and coves.
"Most of the fish I am catching are off of the big, deep coves of the main shoreline where there is some type of structure," he said.
An example of such a spot is a long, extended point that contains brush or has standing timber with deep water nearby. The fish will be suspended in such areas just under baitfish. Wilson goes after them with bucktail jigs.
"There are fish in a lot of different places now, and some are feeding at night," Wilson said.
If the weather remains mild, Wilson believes the stripers will move into their early spring pattern sooner than usual. That will occur when the water temperature reaches its lowest point, then begins to ease upward. The stripers will go to the banks then, Wilson said.
"It could happen early to mid-February," he said.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB