Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 2, 1995 TAG: 9501040032
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Campbell is a 60-year-old walleye fishermen. A good one.
"He is one of the better [walleye] pike fishermen I've ever been around," said Roy Smith, a frequent fishing companion of Campbell. "He knows where they are at, and he goes after them hard."
Like six days a week, and sometimes even on Sunday afternoon, following church with his wife.
"I fish when it is cold," said Campbell. "Fished when it was 20 degrees the other morning. Anybody who spends as much time as I do will catch one once in a while."
What Campbell caught this particular morning was a 14-pound, 2-ounce walleye that is a potential state record. As it turned out, catching the fish was easier than getting it certified as a record.
The winter walleye season started slowly for Campbell, Smith and other New River anglers.
"Where we caught them last year, they just didn't bite," said Smith. "Now they are starting to pick up. You might fish four days and not get a strike, then you might catch three or four in one trip."
Walleyes, especially as far south as Virginia, can be a moody fish, snubbing the best efforts of anglers one day and feeding readily the next.
A week earlier, Campbell had caught one that weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces in the same stretch of river. Anything 5 pounds or more is worthy of a citation from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Lacking a strike this day, he began easing his boat back downstream. It was a gray, cloudy morning.
"They usually hit best early in the morning, up until 8 or 9 o'clock, then again in the evening, about an hour before dark, until a little after dark," said Campbell. "If it is a cloudy day and the sun isn't shining, they will hit pretty good about all day."
Even then, Campbell probes the dense, deep water for strikes. Walleyes have large, milky, luminous eyes - hence their name - and aren't fond of bright light.
About 9 a.m., Campbell eased his anchor down at a favorite hole. He put a minnow out with one rod and began casting a three-eighths-ounce white bucktail with another. He had cast maybe three times, letting the jig sink to the bottom, then bumping it along the rock ledges. That's when the big fish grabbed his lure with its tooth-filled mouth.
"I knew he was big, but I didn't realize he was that big," said Campbell. "I figured he was maybe 8 or 9 pounds."
Walleyes don't have the reputation of being heavyweights when it comes to fighting, but they are at their best in a river environment.
This one came out of the depths reluctantly, under the pull of Campbell's 6-foot rod, Mitchell 300 reel and 12-pound line.
"I had a pretty good net," said Campbell, who was fishing alone. "I tried to get him into the net and he ran his head into it and his mouth hung in the net up next to the rim. I couldn't get him down in the net, and I couldn't get him out. I thought sure he was going to get off."
While holding the net with one hand, Campbell carefully brought the 31-inch fish alongside the boat and reached down with his other hand and pulled it free from the net, letting it swim back to the river's depths.
"I knew then he was bigger than 10 pounds, because I caught one last year in the same place that was 10 pounds. I kind of got a little excited then."
Campbell battled the bronze-colored fish back to the boat a second time, successfully pulling it aboard.
"I figured it was 12 pounds, maybe better. I knew the record was around 12 pounds, but not exactly what." (The record is a 12-pound, 15-ounce walleye caught Feb. 2, 1990, at the South Holston River.)
The fact that he might have a record really didn't enter Campbell's mind, so he kept on casting. He caught a couple of 3-pounders from the same hole, then pulled anchor and let the current take him downstream. While drifting and bouncing a jig along the bottom, he landed a 6-pound, 4 ounce-walleye.
It had been a good day, but things were about to turn sour. A couple of miles up the road from the river, Campbell pulled into Jones Service Center in Wythe County, where proprietor Tom Jones weighs the fish on his state-certified scales.
Jones sensed it was a record, and started calling game wardens and anyone else he could think of connected to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. The weighing of a potential record must be witnessed by a department employee, and the fish also must be identified and examined by a state fish biologist. Those are the rules. But try finding someone on the eve of Christmas Eve, Campbell said.
Jones finally reached C.O. Whisman, superintendent of the Wytheville Fish Cultural Station. Whisman verified the weight.
Locating a biologist has proved to be tougher. A week after the catch Campbell's walleye still hadn't been checked by a biologist, in spite of calls to Richmond and elsewhere.
Taxidermist Franklin Mabe kept it in cold water for about half a day, then put it in his freezer. The rules say that a potential record isn't to be frozen until checked by a biologist, but Mabe was concerned that the fish would deteriorate and be difficult to mount.
"They [state game officials] are just stretched so thin it is hard to get anybody during the holiday season," he said.
by CNB