Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504250015
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It was a reasonable assumption. The 845-acre state-owned impoundment near Farmville is laced with structure, including stumps, standing timber and trees that were knocked down and crunched up when the lake was constructed a decade ago. You get the feeling you've entered a Deep South setting when you launch your boat, and even half expect to see an alligator sunning on the bank.
"We were in pretty much an open area, but there was structure beneath us," said Rick Searls, Moss' fishing partner for the day. "We could feel it with the worm."
Moss and Searls, who are from the Richmond-Ashland area, had been fishing for 41/2 hours without success. It was 4:30 p.m.
"We had said we were going to fish five hours," Searls said. "We were giving it 10 more minutes. We were hitting that last hole. It was pretty much one of these last-cast things."
That's when the "stump" that Moss had hooked started swimming off.
"Rick, it's a fish!" Moss said. "Get the net for me!"
Moss' spinning outfit was bowed double.
"I think it's a big one!" he said.
When Searls bent to grab the net, the largemouth bass leaped from the water, displaying a huge mouth with Moss' 6-inch, Carolina-rigged Riverside Big Wag worm dangling from it. The fish had bulging eyes, red-flared gills and a girth the size of an over inflated football.
"Rick, this is a real big one!" Moss said.
Searls heard the explosion in the water, but didn't see the bass jump when he reached for the net.
"It was lucky I didn't see him, because I probably would have panicked," he said.
"Once we got him to the boat, he went under the boat one time," said Searls. "Scott pulled him up and I put the net on him and he was flat across the net. He wouldn't go in it, he was so big."
When Searls managed to heave the bass aboard, he and Moss began to ponder how much it weighed.
"I had a set of scales in the boat," Searls said. "They only went up to 12 pounds. He buried them. I said, 'It looks like a 14-pounder to me, Scott.' But I'd never seen a 14-pounder, so I didn't know."
Several days earlier, Searls had landed a 9-pound, 14-ounce largemouth at Briery Creek Lake. A fish that size is considered a catch of a lifetime, but Searls knew Moss' catch dwarfed it. Still, neither angler thought anything about a state record.
The next day, on state-certified scales, the fish weighed 16 pounds, 3.2 ounces. The state record is a 16-pound, 4-ounce Lake Conner catch taken in mid-April 1985 by Richard Tate of Ringgold.
Now every time a fisherman hooks a bass or stump at Briery Creek Lake he or she is thinking record. Will it happen?
"I hate to say," said Bill Kittrell, a regional fisheries manager for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "About every time I say there is a potential record out there, 50 more boats show up. But I would have to say it is an extremely hot lake right now."
You get the idea of just how hot when Kittrell fingers down a list of 20 trophy bass he is aware of that have been landed at Briery Creek this spring.
"They are like, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 pounds," he said.
"I think we have a couple of things working for us," Kittrell said. One factor, when the lake was stocked in 1986 and again in 1987, three Florida bass were released for every native Northern bass. Florida bass have a reputation of growing bigger than native largemouth.
"We had four of the big bass checked last year and they were all Florida intergrades, which is basically a hybrid - part Florida and part Northern," Kittrell said.
Adding to the good genes is the fact that Briery Creek Lake has hit the age of peak big-fish production, he said.
"Every time you have a new reservoir, the first couple of years' classes of fish grow like gangbusters," Kittrell said. "I think we are peaking out on those early-year classes."
When asked if the spring of 1995 likely will be the all-time big bass season, Kittrell said, "I can't predict that. I would like to think next year is going to be just as good. With the kind of fishing pressure we are getting right now, it is hard to say."
As many as 150 boats a day are showing up at the lake as word spreads of the big-bass boom. With that kind of pressure, the salvation of future fishing lies in catch-and-release, he said.
Some anglers are doing a good job of that. Bruce Lee, who operates a carpet shop in Fredericksburg, has caught and released bass that weighed 10 pounds, 13 ounces; 10 pounds, 14 ounces; and 10 pounds, 6 ounces.
"Two of the boys who work at the shop, I took them down there and they caught a 13-13 and a 12-9 and an 8-4," Lee said. "The amount of citations coming out there for the size of the lake is unreal."
Many of the bass are being caught on shiners, or jumbo minnows, said Steve Lane, who operates Anglers' Cove, a tackle shop in Richmond.
"The jumbo minnows give everybody an opportunity to catch them," Lane said. "Not everybody is able to fish that kind of structure with artificial bait without losing everything they own."
Fishermen want the biggest minnows they can get their hands on, which means the 6- to 9-inch size has been in high demand, Lane said. His shop is selling as many as 50 pounds of minnows a day.
The attraction at Anglers' Cove isn't just big minnows. Finning around in a large aquarium at the shop is the big bass Moss caught.
"It is creating a groove in my carpet from the front door back to my aquarium," Lane said.
by CNB