Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411100037
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For a while, anyway.
A lone angler approached a long, still pool hoping to catch a smallmouth bass, when he spotted several fish finning about in the clear water. They weren't bronze colored, like bass, but had dark, olive backs and silver sides, and they were heavily spotted.
Rainbow trout!
The angler was using a Rebel Teeny Crawfish, one of the new micro family of lures, but the trout only would take nervous swipes at it, veering off at the last moment.
When the angler started reeling quickly, then stopping in mid-retrieve, the trout began hitting the lure at pause. All the angler had to do then was strike when he saw a gaping mouth and he'd have a fish bowing his pint-sized rod.
He hooked a limit in a little more than half an hour and saw only one other fisherman while doing it. That was the amazing part, the lack of competition.
The next morning a few more fishermen showed up, but not enough to call it a crowd. There were more mallards stirring the water than fishermen.
Just after 7 a.m., one angler waded to a bridge piling and drifted bait down a shadowed channel, getting a strike on nearly every run. They were hefty fish, bigger than you'd expect out of the back of a hatchery truck. When hooked, they swirled to the surface, their bright sides still brighter as they turned toward an early-day October sun. You could see the gleam of red along the length of their body.
When the angler got his six, he waded out and a younger fisherman replaced him, standing in the exact spot, as if a line had been drawn where you were supposed to place your toes. He got a limit, too.
A fisherman below the bridge could see trout, but they showed no interest in his spinner.
A man in a white shirt hung over the bridge, his tie dangling toward the water. ``Did they stock trout here?'' he wanted to know.
They had, he was told.
The word slowly was getting around.
When you add trout to a stream, even a familiar stream and even hatchery trout, a transformation takes place. Suddenly the stream is more desirable, as if transported back to an innocent era, a time when things were wild and pure.
No other fish can do that quite like a trout. The experience is all the better if you can wash your soul in riffles sparkling in the autumn sun without the hip boots of other fishermen being planted in every puddle within sight.
Sometimes you can, even on the Roanoke River, where cars and pickups and dump trucks loaded with gravel and school buses whiz past. A handful of fishermen did that nicely for a couple of days last week.
That's what state fish officials hope to accomplish with a year-round trout season. They want a system where any time a fishermen shows up there will be a reasonable number of trout, along with a reasonable amount of serenity.
That was especially nice for the fishermen who somehow managed to stumble across the fact that the Roanoke River had been stocked last week. You have to wonder, though, how the working stiffs in the office felt when the guy in the white shirt arrived to exclaim:
``Hey, did you know they stocked the Roanoke River yesterday?''
by CNB