Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993 TAG: 9302180102
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NO REAL PATTERN TO FOLLOW IN MID-FEBRUARY FISHING
Mid-February can be an in-between time for anglers. The fish are beginning to turn a cold shoulder to winter patterns, yet they haven't fully warmed to spring patterns.That explains why you might find them deep one day and shallow the next, feeding one time and closed-mouthed another.
Here's a look at what they were doing the last time somebody dropped them a line:
Claytor Lake has been a late-winter hot spot, turning out trophy smallmouth bass along with striped bass well above the size you would have expected to catch a half-dozen years ago.
Gregg Roop of Radford weighed a 4-pound, 11-ounce smallmouth, and Dennis Fox of Peterstown, W. Va., got one that was 4 pounds, 15 ounces. Johnny Worrell of Pulaski landed an 18-pound, 1-ounce striped bass.
New River fishermen have been tangling with muskie in the Whitethorn area. You can attract more muskie to your lures if you use light line, Keith White of Pearisburg has discovered, but you'd better grow accustomed to the sound of monofilament snapping.
A few 2- to 4-pound trout are being caught at Moomaw Lake, but there is more action on the other side of the dam where the Jackson River is favoring anglers who cast tiny Nos. 24 to 28 flies.
Smith Mountain Lake is producing a modest number of striped bass, some hitting plugs on the surface just after daylight.
At Kerr Lake, the falling water level has reached the 296-foot level. A few 6- to 7-pound bass have been landed on spinnerbaits worked in the shallows. Above Kerr, the walleye are doing more crawling than running in the Staunton River. The peak fishing normally is from Long Island to Brookneal, but this time it may be better upstream, toward Leesville Dam.
\ NOT SO GREAT: The NRA Great American tour has been drawing impressive crowds at most of the 25 cities the hunting show has visited. The National Rifle Association says it has logged 50,000 inquiries and preregistrations on its special hotline.
About 650 people turned out for the tour in Salem - well under last year's crowd - and some participants expressed disappointment in what they saw and heard.
Most of the complaints center on the smaller-than-expected number of displays of hunting gear and the laborious presentation of one of the featured speakers, Wayne van Zowell, a firearms expert.
Richard Taylor, a long-time NRA member from Fincastle, expressed his disappointment in a letter to Wayne LaPierre, who heads the association:
"Obviously you have not attended one of these tours because if you did I seriously doubt that you would put your stamp of endorsement on what I witnessed, or should I say, didn't witness. [It] was beneath what I've come to expect from the NRA."
\ TOO MUCH HARDWARE: Sometimes the awards ceremony at a Virginia Bowhunters Association archery tournament can appear to be more of a marathon than the competition itself. Jim Quarles, who has won the state title on a number of occasions - including events at the Sherwood Archers range near Hanging Rock - says there are too many divisions and classes with too few participants getting too many trophies.
"Our championship tournaments over the last 35 years have degenerated into hardware giveaways with about two-thirds of the participants receiving an award," he said.
Quarles wants the VBA to do something about that at its next meeting.
"We have added divisions and then added classes to those divisions so that all members could compete with the equipment and shooting style of their choice under the threat that if we did not add all those smaller ponds for shooters to jump into, attendance would diminish," Quarles said.
Attendance has dropped, anyway, he said.