Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994 TAG: 9406020013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We started fishing just off the Great Wilcomico River, and when that didn't produce, Kuykendall headed the Don-El deeper into the bay. We caught one bluefish. With the day waning and our frustration growing, we returned to the Great Wilcomico.
Suddenly our rods were bowing under the powerful surges of big blues. Their tooth-filled jaws would chop down on our baits and lures like a steel trap. Some would leap like smallmouth bass, and the sun would glitter on their shimmering blue-gray bodies and highlight their red-flared gills. When they hit the water they would rip gobs of line from our begrudging reels.
Long ago I'd learned to go after blues with lightweight tackle, and even a fly rod.
Some captains balked at that, because it meant fewer catches, but Kuykendall encouraged the sport-rather-than-meat approach.
Many of his peers preferred to dock with 500 pounds or more of bluefish. I recall one day in the mid-'80s when a friend of mine was on a charter boat that kept so many blues the craft got stuck on a shoal when returing to the harbor.
That was free advertisement for the charter, but it also was gluttony that may have cost dearly in the long run. Bluefish angling in the bay now is only a shadow of the good old days of just a decade ago. In fact, many anglers in the western part of the state simply don't bother to go anymore.
But we still get calls at the newspaper: "Any blues in the bay this spring?"
With every spring there is hope that schools of jumbo blues will migrate north from wintering areas off North Carolina's Outer Banks, then turn into the bay where they once gathered in black clouds around Buoy 48 off Reedville.
But that hasn't happened the past five years or so. As for this year, it is early to make a definite prediction, but there doesn't appear to be much hope for a reversal of the string of sorry seasons. A number of tournaments in the bay have produced only a handful of bluefish. There have been three citations entered in the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament, the largest a 21-pound, 2-ounce trophy. That amounts to just a few fish for a large number of anglers.
What is surprising, the talk of some tournament participants isn't about the scarcity of bluefish but about the abundance of striped bass. We have reached a point that it can be easier to catch a striper than a blue.
You can't keep the spring-caught striped bass in Virginia. The season is closed because a number of years ago the striper population plunged to even greater depths than the bluefish population has today.
The salvation of the striped bass population has been an amazing story. Stripers have rebounded to the point that there has been a fall-winter season the past couple years. Chances are excellent that the season will be expanded as much as 15 days this year.
By next year, the striper population, some scientists say, should return to the levels of the halcyon days of 1960-72. That's going to mean even more liberal fishing regulations.
Herein lies hope for bluefish. If the stripers can do it, why can't the blues?
by CNB