Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403200093
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Spence lives in Botetourt County, where he has the option of fishing home streams that flow clear and pure from the leafless ridges of the Jefferson National Forest. He prefers the Roanoke River at Wiley Drive, where the rush of water often is trammelled by the rumble of Norfolk Southern locomotives.
"I like the bigger water," he said.
His "big water-plus-big bait-equals-big fish" theory paid off Saturday with the first cast of the season. At the 9 a.m. starting time, Spence threaded a night crawler onto his hook, then garnished the barb with a salmon egg. A flick of his lightweight spinning outfit sent the meat-and-eggs offering across the green water trailing 6-pound monofilament that glittered in the sunlight like a fluorescent spider web.
The bait plopped into a still-water pool and before the circles from the impact had widened much beyond washtub size, something big and powerful grabbed it. Spence instinctively leaned back on his rod, sending his hook tearing into the hard flesh of a trout's jaw.
It was no ordinary trout, the kind that when hooked comes spinning and splashing across the surface like a willow leaf held captive by the wind. This one went the other way, went upstream then downstream, went anywhere it wanted to go, as if it owned the river. It fought harder than the 6-pound, 4-ounce brown trout Spence caught in March 1993 about 100 yards downstream.
This one, too, was a brown, its deeply colored body speckled with black spots, its gaping mouth filled with double zigzagging rows of teeth.
"It took me about 10 minutes to get him in," Spence said.
Spence figured it would weigh 5 pounds, the minimum size to earn a citation from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
With little reason to cast a second time, he loaded up and headed for a set of scales. At a convenience market, the proprietor told him he couldn't weigh it because of health laws, so Spence drove to a tackle shop in Cloverdale, where he wisely had signed up for a big-trout contest. The fish was 4 pounds, 8 ounces.
Back along Wiley Drive, Spence later came striding down the Roanoke River, his fish on a stringer, like a gold medal on a chain, the envy of every angler who saw it.
"He's going on the wall," Spence told a crowd gathered around him.
Up the river in Salem, Buck Campbell of Salem landed two trophy browns that weighed 4 pounds, 2 ounces and 4 pounds, 10 ounces.
The hot bait of the season is Select Power Bait Glitter by Berkley, said Rob Elmore of All Huntin' & Fishin' in Salem.
Across the valley, it was standing-room-only along some stretches of Tinker Creek. Eighty-four anglers gathered around a bridge hole.
When some of them turned from the water to rebait their hooks, they were met by clean-cut youngsters who asked: "Want to buy some doughnuts?" It was the youth group from the East Gate Church of Nazarene selling doughnuts and coffee to pay for a trip to Washington, D.C.
The best customers, Todd Casey said, were those who arrived at the creek by 7 a.m. to claim a spot and to cast "I was here first, buddy," glances at those who came later.
Upstream from the hole of 84, Timothy Davis of Roanoke was hooking trout on minnows, and below him Barry Snyder, 41, was trying to remember the first time he fished for trout on Tinker Creek.
"I think I was 16," he said. "That first year we had a big clean-up project before they stocked it. Vic Thomas got it started. My grandfather, Fred Adams, was president of the local civic club at that time."
Thomas, now a high-profile member of the General Assembly, remembers how tough it was to get trout the first time.
"We had 300 people here one Saturday morning with trucks, bulldozers, everything you can think of to pick up trash," he recalled.
When the state wouldn't provide fish to stock the creek, Thomas got on the phone to Sen. Harry Byrd.
"Three days later we had 5,000 of the prettiest trout that you'd ever seen in your life. Some of them 18 to 20 inches," he said.
Tinker Creek has been a big part of the largely ritualistic celebration known as opening day ever since, but Saturday's party might have been the final one, or maybe next to the last. The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is expected to give serious consideration to establishing a year-round season by 1995 or 1996. A department survey found anglers supporting the year-round concept by a margin of 3-1.
"I like an opening day," Snyder said. "It gives everybody something to look forward to. The only ones who would get more out of a year-round season are the ones who don't have to work."
"Traditions die slowly in the Commonwealth, but it's time to bury this one," said Jim Brewer, a tackle shop owner in Charlottesville who is promoting a year-round season. "This could be the last one . . . Let's hope so, anyway."
Richard Pauley of Daleville hopes that isn't the case. Seven minutes into the season Saturday, he had a limit of six trout on Roaring Run in Botetourt County.
"Opening day is like the kid coming out in you; it is like Christmas," Pauley said. "I think if you had Christmas every day it wouldn't be nearly as exciting."
by CNB