Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9406190087
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He wanted to show us the best place to get through the brush to the water. A deer had used the faint path a few hours earlier, probably at night, its heart-shaped tracks still etched in the moist earth.
The bottomland was alive with gnats. On the drive from Roanoke, the weatherman had said the day would be hot and muggy. As we flailed the gnats, I wondered it he'd really said "hot and buggy." He should have.
We were about to fish a warm-water tributary of the James River, casting for smallmouth bass, sunfish and anything else wearing fins and eager to strike.
This is grab-bag fishing, and it is a delightful practice that can be enjoyed at hundreds of streams across the state.
You never know what will tug at your line next. Success isn't measured by the size of the fish, but rather by sheer numbers and variety. Each species adds spice to the outing with its own characteristics and capabilities. This makes for mystery around every bend, below every riffle, inside every pool.
The stretch of creek we waded into flowed through a canopy of green, which formed such a thick cocoon that the outside world - the sky, the bottomland fields, even the gnats - were locked out.
The only way to fish it was to embrace its wetness, follow its course, breathe its air, lean against its pressure, walk its rocks. It was a matter of us becoming part of a living, moving thing.
There were undercut banks, and upended trees; pools deep enough for kids to swim in; and riffles that sang the melody of flowing water. All of them were targets for our bite-size lures.
We landed so many species that our angling became like bird watching or a wild flower walk.
The boss fish was the smallmouth bass. Dressed in bronze, with a dash of red in its predator eye, it would leap from the water as if to belligerently question who had dared invade its domain.
Some of the fallfish we hooked were nearly as long as the bass, and they would fight hard, but only for a few seconds. Then they would give up. What can you expect from an overgrown minnow?
We caught horneyheads, which, in reality, are stonerollers, although you'll never hear anyone other than a biologist call them that. The name "horneyhead" is used by anglers to cover about any species with tubercles on its rounded head.
According to Bob Jenkins' new book, "Freshwater Fishes of Virginia," some shed their "horns" just like a buck deer, once the mating season has ended. Others commit even more to the mating process. Postnuptial males often are found battered, dying and dead, with fungused wounds, a testimony to the vigor of their ardor.
Jenkins' book, which is full of these tidbits, would be a welcome companion on a warm-water stream, but it hardly is a pocketsize Peterson. It weighs 6 1/2 pounds, which makes it about six times bigger than any fish you will encounter.
So you consult it when you get home, hoping you can remember the colors and shapes of any fish you need to identify. Most of our streams will contain at least 30 species.
We caught sunfish, probably the redbreast variety. There are scores of cousins in this family, and no two redbreast ever are alike. The males wear vests that are orange and yellow, in addition to red. Their upper body is flaked with blue that is iridescent fresh out of the water.
Whoever designed the sunfish gave it more spirit than mouth. They will try to wrap their dime-size mouth around lures as long as they are.
Rock bass have much the same saucer-shape body, but they come equipped with the mouth of a bass, a trait that endears them to fishermen. Their eye is big, too, and bright red, so they have nicknames like red eye and goggle eye. They looked pretty good to us when the smallmouth wouldn't hit.
Anglers have a habit of putting values on a fish. A trout gets a high mark. So does a smallmouth. At the other end of the scale is the horneyhead.
The truth is, when a fish is bowing your rod you really never can be certain what is giving you a thrill until you pull it from the water.
by CNB