ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 5, 1996 TAG: 9609050084
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: OUTDOORS
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
With Hurricane Fran churning up the coast, it looks like another lost weekend for marlin fishermen out of Virginia's Rudee Inlet and North Carolina's Oregon Inlet.
The peak of the billfish season has been taking hits from hurricanes; yet, there have been enough days of light wind and calm seas for the 1996 marlin action to be classified as above average.
``We are in the midst of a really fine billfish bite,'' said Claude Bain, director of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament. ``We've had a lot of satisfied customers.''
The blue-water boats were on the marlin grounds Wednesday, with the wind blowing 10 to 15 mph out of the east, ``but I would guess it will be the last day of fishing this week,'' Bain said after checking Fran's whereabouts on The Weather Channel.
The annual Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament, scheduled this weekend, has been postponed. It had been scheduled for Labor Day Weekend, but was set back a week when Hurricane Edouard approached.
While Edouard made for a bumpy ride along the Virginia-Carolina coast, it was only a temporary disruption to offshore fishing. By daybreak Tuesday, the big diesel engines of the charter boats were rumbling again, and the marlin were taking the trolled offerings of anglers. David Wright, skipper of the High Hopes, out of Rudee, caught and released 15 white marlin.
If Fran is no more intrusive, the marlin fishing should bounce back quickly, but that wasn't the case last year when Hurricane Felix took residence offshore.
``What Felix did last year, it tore up the water and 10 days later when the boats went off the coast all they could find was green, cold water,'' Bain said. ``They couldn't find any billfish or any offshore fish.''
Few fish were landed from mid-August until late September. Some boats out of Oregon Inlet reported losing 20 days of prime marlin fishing.
``I tell people the peak billfishing out of Oregon Inlet and Virginia Beach is the last 10 days of August and the first 20 days of September,'' said Bain.
Storms just don't keep boats in port, but they uproot the pods of warm water that hold marlin, he said.
``When a hurricane comes through, it tears up the water and I guess destroys that stratification,'' Bain said. ``You get a lot of upwelling of colder water that comes up to the top.''
This season, the majority of the marlin have been holding to an area Southeast of the Cigar, a seamount 65 miles southeast of Rudee. Boats out of Rudee and Oregon Inlet have been fishing the same water.
If winds and high seas from Fran churn the water enough to disrupt the marlin habitat, then a large chunk could be lost out of the peak of the season, Bain said. But that didn't happen with Edouard, who passed harmlessly out to sea. That has fishermen hoping Fran will be more like Edouard than Felix.
The billfish season started late this summer, unlike last year, when July offered outstanding sport.
``This year, there was nothing until about the 12th of August,'' Bain said. ``Then we had as fine of 18 days of billfishing that we've had in a long time at the end of August. There were a lot of boats getting between five and 10 releases a day.''
Some even more. Bill and Wendy Moore of Roanoke, along with a couple sons and friends, caught and released 11 marlin on a trip aboard First Crack out of Oregon Inlet.
Darin Greear, Russell Coble and Mark Altieer, from the Radford-Riner area, earned citations in the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament with marlin and sailfish catch-and-releases. Frank Rogers III of Roanoke got a citation for a marlin catch and release.
The state-sponsored tournament has registered 428 white marlin and 27 blue marlin catch-and-releases. If Fran stays offshore or hits the coast and heads inland well to the south, look for those numbers to swell.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 linesby CNB