ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608120120
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-8 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: OUTDOORS
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
At first glance, you might mistake Mike Coley for an amateur angler. There's his boat, positioned in shallow water on Smith Mountain Lake, hardly a boat-length from the bank, on an early afternoon in August.
Too shallow and the wrong time of day, you say? True fishermen are taking a midday nap or hanging around air conditioning, saving their energy for the prime times at the crack of dawn and dusk, right?
And what can you expect to find at 10- to 15-foot depths with the August sun searing the water surface?
What Coley has been finding is striped bass - in good numbers and good sizes.
``I don't think we've ever caught as many fish from 14 to 16 pounds as we have caught this summer,'' he said. ``We are catching a fair number of fish on up to 18 pounds. We got two citations one day: a 20- and 24-[pounder].''
The really big stripers, however, have been elusive, and that hurts because Coley is a guide who specializes in bragging-size fish, as indicated by the name of his service, ``Trophy Stripers.''
When asked about that this past week, he was almost apologetic.
``It sounds like one of those fisherman stories,'' he said. ``We seriously have lost every good fish we've hooked. It is just one of those things; I don't know. I need to get the monkey off my back about that.''
Monday was a prime example.
``We had a really good fish on for 10 minutes and never even got to see him,'' Coley said. ``It was one of the biggest fish we had on this year. After 10 minutes we were not close to landing that fish. He was peeling off line. It was a fish well over 30 pounds, I feel sure.''
The big fellow, like many of the stripers Coley is hooking, came shortly after noon in about 15 feet of water.
``In the past several weeks, our best fishing has been from noon to 3 o'clock,'' he said. ``It seems like they will feed early in the morning and have another good feed in the afternoon. They will move up shallow and feed. We are catching them close to the banks and in shallow water - 10, 15 feet of water. Normally, you can't catch any fish in the summer at that depth.''
But this hasn't been a normal summer, he said. Nothing like last year, when there were strings of 95-degree days and rain was infrequent.
``We just haven't been having much hot weather,'' he said. ``The surface temperature is holding at about 80 degrees. Normally, it is in the mid-80s. I've even see it 90 degrees before. The cooler temperatures are keeping them shallow.''
The fishing, for Coley, has been better this summer than it was in the spring.
``We probably had one of the worst springs I can remember,'' he said. ``I like March and April, but we were having so much cool, rainy weather, and the wind blew consistently, and the water temperatures would not warm up. The fish wouldn't get on a springtime pattern at all. The places you normally found them, they weren't there. We had no luck at all with the bigger fish.''
Coley is anticipating another month of good fishing, with a chance to boat some trophy catches before the action begins to tail off in mid-September. It will pick back up again about mid-November, he predicted.
Most of his fish are being hooked on large gizzard shad.
``I am putting the bait maybe 60 to 75 feet out behind the boat and using the electric motor to slow-troll. Usually, I will run four lines and may put a balloon on one of them.''
The balloon acts as a large float, keeping the bait at a consistent depth and giving the shad a slightly different, more erratic action, Coley said. Most of his stripers are coming from the lower reaches of the lake. Steep banks have been a hot spot.
``I have seen some big schools of fish, but they are concentrated in certain areas,'' he said. ``It certainly isn't like it once was when you could fish a lot of areas and catch fish. Now you are either on a lot of fish or nothing at all.''
LENGTH: Medium: 74 linesby CNB