Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 18, 1993 TAG: 9311180125
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, not exactly.
Striped bass anglers also count on cooler temperatures to get their favorite fish into high gear. That's why the peak late-season striper fishing generally occurs at Smith Mountain Lake about the time the deer season opens into mid-December.
Wednesday morning, when guide Bob King checked the water temperature gauge on his boat at Hales Ford Bridge it read a balmy 58.7 degrees.
"It would be even higher if it weren't cloudy," he said.
Even so, the reading was about 5 degrees higher than King was registering prior to the warming trend. That appeared to be enough to stall the success of many striper anglers.
"When it was cooler the stripers were moving into the creeks and we were catching them with bucktails and bait," he said. "I think they've moved back out into the channels."
The stripers are more vulnerable when they are in the creeks, where it is easier for anglers to locate them and entice them with a lure, a fact that makes fall an ideal time to go after this species.
But the fall pattern has been so slow developing this year guide Dale Wilson wonders if it will occur at all.
"I don't think we are going to have a peak fall, we are going to have an early winter pattern," he said.
Right now Wilson is predicting that the best action will start about mid-December and last two to three weeks. When it does, "there is going to be some good fishing," he said.
It isn't just the recent warming trend that has delayed the fishing, said Wilson. Probably more to blame is the extremely hot and dry summer which pushed water temperatures high and kept them there for a longer-than-normal period. The best late-season striper fishing occurs when the water hits 50 to 55 degrees, he said.
Striped bass fishing is downright poor at Kerr Lake, where anglers say they absolutely can't locate any schooling fish. Slow is the word also coming from Gaston Lake.
Fishermen can look to Claytor Lake for a somewhat better report. That's where Dickie Graves, Alvin Sheppherd and Mike Albert of Christiansburg teamed up to catch five striper, the largest weighing about 17-pounds. Claytor has developed into such an enticing striper fishing spot that it hasn't been unusual to see guide boats from Smith Mountain Lake on the impoundment.
In addition to striped bass, Claytor holds some jumbo-size white bass, and fall is a traditional time to catch them. Don Surface of Dublin caught a pair that weighed 2 pounds, 13 ounces and 2 pounds, 4 ounces.
At Philpott Lake, some fishermen have been enjoying excellent crappie fishing, while others have been reeling in chunky smallmouth bass. Alvin Hall of Bassett weighed a citation-size 4-pound, 15-ounce smallmouth. It took 20 pounds to win a recent bass tournament at Philpott.
A tournament on Gaston Lake was won with a catch of 10 largemouth bass that weighed 40 pounds. Crappie fishing is reported to be excellent at Gaston.
A 21-boat bass tournament at Leesville Lake resulted in a 15 1/2-pound catch for the winning boat. But the big excitement at Leesville has been the unusually high number of rock bass citations. One angler, Bill Adcock of Hurt, has checked 10 at Andy Thurston's G&S Market in Hurt.
That has pricked the curiosity of a number of fish biologists, who wonder if the catches are the rare Roanoke bass. Thurston doesn't think so, but is set to call a state fish biologist if anyone brings in a 2-pounder.
Adcock has landed most of his bass on a crankbait, but Dale Wilson says bucktails also work well. Wilson landed three citations in about an hour's time one day last week.
by CNB