Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993 TAG: 9306030040
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bill Cochran
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The stripers are returning from their spawning run up the Roanoke and Dan rivers, where earlier in the spring they unloaded their cargo of eggs and milt in great milky swirls, propagating the future of their kind.
Once that important duty was accomplished, they eased back down the two streams, which wind through rural Piedmont like fluttering green ribbons. When the stripers hit the lake, gaunt and hungry, fishermen were waiting with baits lowered into the turbid water.
If you are there at the right time, you can enjoy a season's worth of action in a matter of minutes. A couple of fishermen the other day had a limit of eight - the best one a 15 1/2-pounder - during a two-hour flurry. Most of the stripers are being caught on live bait.
Elsewhere at Kerr, the crappie fishing is excellent. One tackle shop registered 25 citations during a single week, the largest a 3-pound, 10-ounce trophy. The lower water level is credited with the improved crappie fishing; yet, the level is high enough to be lapping at the shoreline willows. That results in ideal bass fishing, especially early and late in the day.
\ OTHER CATCHES: Claytor Lake produced a 42-pound, 9-ounce flathead catfish for Missy Cox and Harold Dalton of Draper. The state record is a 56-pound Occoquan Reservoir fish landed five years ago. Claytor also yielded a 21-pound striped bass.
Bobby Colston, who operates a tackle shop at Lake Gaston, took a postman's holiday and pulled nine largemouths from around docks while casting plastic worms and lizards.
Briery Creek Lake continues to produce big sunfish, while Lake Moomaw is turning out catfish, crappie and trout.
Two fishermen at Moomaw recently landed 100 fish - mostly trout - while trolling with downriggers. Productive lures have been the Krocodile and Huss spoons, according to Larry Andrews of The Bait Place.
Most trollers move along slowly, but the catch of 100 was made at the fairly fast speed of 2 mph, Andrews said. The best trout weighed 7.84 pounds.
\ SPANISH INVASION: Charter boats working out of Rudee Inlet in Virginia Beach have gotten into the first Spanish mackerel of the season. Pods of mackerel have been found south of the inlet off Sandbridge Beach. These fish can be expected to move into the Cape Henry and Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel areas, where they should delight small-boat operators into the fall, when cool breezes send the fish back south.
Spanish mackerel have been helping to spice the fishing along the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a little more than a week, but the action has been more miss than hit.
More reliable has been the offshore fishing for yellowfin tuna. Charter boats out of Oregon Inlet at Nags Head have been running south and finding above-average numbers of tuna. Charles Beck of Roanoke recently boated a limit while aboard the Candle Wick Lady out of Pirate's Cove.
Beck had arranged for his wife to meet him at the dock for pictures, but the catch was taken so quickly the boat docked early and the fish had been cleaned before she arrived.
\ FREE FOR ALMOST ALL: Saturday and Sunday have been designated as Free Fishing Days in Virginia, which means that game wardens won't be checking fishing licenses in most instances. There are a couple of exceptions. You still will have to have a license to fish in stocked trout streams or in the Chesapeake Bay.
The free fishing elsewhere is designed to introduce newcomers to angling.
\ STOCKING ENDS: Spring trout stocking is all but over, with only two streams scheduled to get fish this week (they will be announced Friday). The weekly stockings are scheduled to resume in the fall.
One angler, Eddie Pritchard of Roanoke, will have plenty of memories to carry him through the lean times. After the last stocking at Jennings Creek in Botetourt County, Pritchard was drifting salmon eggs through some riffles when a 19-inch, 2.65-pound brook trout gobbled up his offering and sent him trotting to a taxidermist shop.
"I've been fishing all my life and this is the biggest trout I've ever caught," he said.
by CNB