Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 20, 1995 TAG: 9503220002
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"There is a rainbow that weighs 8 to 9 pounds; an 8- to 9-pound brown; a 5-pound brook."
Hilton knows the fish are there because he stocked them himself and no one has caught them, even though at least 20 fishermen are doing their best as he speaks.
Welcome to the Cedar Springs Sportsman Lodge, where a 2.10-mile stretch of Cripple Creek produces more trophy trout than any stream or lake in the state.
Last year, 37 percent of the trout citations registered with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries from throughout the state were Cripple Creek fish. No telling how many trophies were carted home unceremoniously to the frying pan without being weighed.
The stream's reputation has anglers standing at the gate of the lodge every morning with the $25 fishing fee in hand. There would be more, but the lodge has a daily limit of 25.
"The biggest problem we are getting into now, and it concerns me some, people are getting disgusted because they can't fish when they want to," said Hilton. "When they call, they want to fish next week, and some of them are a little belligerent" when told the program is booked into June.
"The wait gets a little aggravating," said Ray Bowers, who drives up from High Point, N.C. Bowers has four trips booked through November, and wishes now he had booked more earlier.
"The attraction is the size of the trout," said Akers Hill, who fishes Cripple Creek once a week year-round. Hill's home is in North Carolina, an 80-minute drive from the lodge.
"I fish a lot of state stocked streams," he said. "Don't get me wrong, the state does a real good job on their state stocking programs, but you can come here and really have a fine day."
On this particular day, Hill has four fat trout attached to his stringer, one of them a brook large enough to be a citation. Hill caught them on hand-tied nymphs which he bumped along the streambed. Later in the season, he will switch to dry flies.
"We don't get a lot of the real purist fly fishermen," Hilton said. "Most are like Akers. They will use a fly for a while, then go to a spinning outfit.
"The thing that amazes me, people will show up and say, 'We don't believe in creeling any fish. We are catch-and-release people.' When they go to their car, they carry everything they have caught. Nobody is going to throw back a 4-pound trout."
The 4-year-old Cedar Springs program has been built on the ideal that big trout create big excitement.
"We have not skimped on the amount or the size of the trout stocked," Hilton said. "The fishermen know that the trout are there. The smallest thing we try to stock is a 2-pound brook trout."
Brook trout of that magnitude aren't plentiful even in Canada, and will qualify for a citation in Virginia. Last year, fishermen at Cripple Creek registered 625 citation brook trout.
"It's amazing," said Hilton. "They would rather catch a 21/2-pound brook trout than a 4-pound brown trout."
The chunky brook trout are shiny and smooth, their colors both subtle and vivid. But what makes them popular, said Hilton, is something fishermen call "friendliness."
"Watch this," he said, tossing food into two hatchery raceways, one filled with fingerling-size brooks and other fingerling-size browns. The browns sulk on the bottom, only one or two rising to feed. At the same time, the brook trout raceway is frothing with a tidal wave of action as the fish go into a feeding frenzy.
"We didn't fool with any brook trout for years, because the state told us they characteristically are a slow-growing trout," said Hilton.
That hasn't been the case at Cedar Springs, he said.
The challenge now is to produce enough big trout to meet demands. With that becoming a problem, last year the Hiltons - Jim, his wife, Carlene, and nephew Ricky - bought the 478-acre Cedar Springs Trout Farm, upstream from the lodge. The operation has both hatching and holding facilities. For Jim Hilton, it was a bit like going home again, because his dad, Glenn Reed, built the hatchery in the '60s.
"With the hatchery and the increased production we can keep up with production demands," Hilton said.
The new area adds another one-half mile of stream (Blue Spring Creek, a tributary of Cripple Creek) to the fee program and provides space for five additional anglers, Hilton said. There also is a farm house for lodging and a campground.
One thing anglers quickly learn, while Cripple Creek is full of big trout it shouldn't be mistaken for a kid's trout pond. The fish can be tough for a first-timer to catch. The five-fish limit can be tough to fill. Some of the big fish escape the hooks of fishermen for months.
"I thought it would be kind of nice to have the state record, so I put in a 13-pound, 8-ounce rainbow in November a year ago," said Hilton. "It was June before someone caught her. When she got out into the wilds, she lost some weight and didn't make the record."
Bobby Cecil, one of the regulars at Cripple Creek, hooked the the huge trout on Power Bait about 150 yards downstream from where it was stocked. It weighed 12 pound, 6 ounce and is displayed in the lodge.
The phone number for booking an outing at Cedar Springs is 703-686-4505.
by CNB