Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 18, 1994 TAG: 9404190019
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY BRUCE STANTON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In clear sight of Victory Stadium and Roanoke Memorial Hospital, he slid down a muddy bank into the Roanoke River. He would have been right at home sitting behind an accountant's desk, but here he was knee-deep in a trout stream.
A few feet away, a man dressed head-to-toe in camouflage also was wading in the river. Brown and green, from his hat to his waders, he looked more like a fisherman, but both men were clothed in the same excitement, the kind that brought little-kids' smiles to their faces. They had been hooked by the same trout bug that joyously was afflicting the approximately 100 other anglers on this small stretch of the Roanoke River a few blocks from downtown Roanoke.
Casting their gold-bladed spinners, they quickly began to fill their stringers with rainbow trout. It didn't matter to the young man that the seat of his pants was soiled with mud, and his department-store tie was coming smellingly close to rubbing every fish he reeled in. The time it took to change into proper outdoor attire just wasn't worth risking for this moment.
Farther upstream, there were other men, women and children casting - some for dinner, others just for the fun of it. The five-o'clock, after-work hour had lured many of them to the river. No time for dinner. No time for changing. There were trout to be caught.
And while the trout season, like the pro baseball and pro basketball season, can seem to last forever - it goes for 101/2 months - there isn't a single minute to be squandered when the hatchery truck arrives.
Like the crowds you'd see at a baseball or basketball game, there were people from all walks of life casting their hooks and hopes to the Roanoke River this warm spring evening. People who drove brand new Jeep Cherokees and people who arrived in old, rusty Ford pickup trucks. People with Orvis rods and shiny reels and people with old, rusty Zebco 404 push-button outfits. White people from one side of town. Blacks from the other. All standing side-by-side with the common purpose of trying to coax a trout onto his or her hook.
From Wiley Drive at River's Edge Sports Complex to Wasena Park, anglers lined the banks and waded the river.
One concrete bridge became a fishing pier with 20 fishermen and fisherwomen sitting side-by-side on buckets, coolers and lawn chairs, casting for the same trout. Containers of corn, Berkley Power Bait, salmon eggs and night crawlers littered the edge of the bridge. Some fished bait with a float; others tightlined. Still others cast spinners and fly-and-spinners.
In a scene unique to urban angling, cars crossed the bridge within inches of the anglers' back casts. Some vehicle owners doubtlessly would find corn drippings on their windshield, salmon eggs on their hood or night crawlers on their rear bumper.
Farther upstream, a family of eight lined a bank, all eight with rods in hand and lines in the water.
A few yards away, a woman watched her line intently as she cast it halfway out and waited for it to drift downstream. Four trout dangling on her stringer were her badge of success. She didn't seem to be aware of the two youngsters who played a radio and danced nearby.
The woman was serious about her fishing. She had a large imprint of a trout fly on her shirt, and her license plate read ``BAIT EM.''
The crowd thinned a bit between Smith Park and the falls at Wasena Park, but there were eight men tightly bunched in a semicircle at the falls, all casting in the same direction, as if ganged up on the trout.
Soon, the setting sun would send them home, but they'll be back. The trout truck will make sure of that.
Bruce Stanton recently moved to Roanoke from Fort Smith, Ark., and refuses to believe you don't have to drive three and a half hours through the mountains and wade through isolated streams for another two hours to go trout fishing.
by CNB