ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 19, 1996 TAG: 9612190027
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: OUTDOORS
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
Fishing tournaments, from Smith Mountain Lake to the Chesapeake Bay, frequently offer a bonus: Catch a state-record fish and win an additional $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000 or even $81,635.
Yeah.
Why not win the lottery while you're at it?
So when entries in the annual Coastal Conservation Association of Virginia/Green Top Rockfish Tournament out of Deltaville were a bit sluggish, co-sponsor Green Top Sporting Goods of Glen Allen decided to offer a bonus. Anyone who set a Virginia saltwater striped bass record while winning the contest would receive $50,000.
The sponsors contacted Gary Martel, fish division chief of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, to inquire about the odds of someone winning the money.
The odds of a fisherman breaking a 15-year-old record during a tournament were considered ``minuscule,'' even with 152 boats and 600 anxious anglers involved. But around the department headquarters in Richmond, words like ``minuscule'' are being repeated with considerable laughter. But it happened.
Jim Muse, a 26-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University art major, reeled in a 61-pound, 12-ounce striped bass that topped the old Virginia record by 12 ounces. Muse won the contest's $5,000 top prize, the $50,000 bonus from Green Top Sporting Goods and the $26,635 Toyota 4X4 pickup truck that had been thrown into the pot by Shimano Fishing Tackle Co.
When contacted by Bob Hutchinson, outdoor editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Muse was pondering how to divide the money with the boat owner, as well as how much he owed in taxes.
Muse landed the record fish aboard the boat Pop-Pop's Toy, owned and skippered by Melvin Chenault, also a Richmond resident.
``Obviously, Melvin deserves something,'' said Muse. ``It was his boat, and he paid the [$150] entry fee.''
Muse said he was fishing the open water of the Chesapeake Bay, between Buoy 42 and the Degaussing cell off the lower Eastern Shore. The 513/4-inch fish hit a gold-colored Crippled Alewife Spoon just after noon. Muse said he had it boated in 15 minutes on 50-pound line.
Claude Bain, director of the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament, wasn't all that surprised at the record catch.
``That was one record that we full well expected to fall,'' he said. ``It is going to fall again the next couple of years.''
Striped bass have been making a miraculous recovery in the bay, bouncing back from a period in the 1980s when stocks became so alarmingly low that it was illegal to keep a fish even if you could catch one. During the 1990s, the stripers, often called ``rockfish'' in saltwater areas, have become more numerous and larger with each passing season.
In the spring, Maryland saw its record smashed with a 67-pound catch.
Virginia's old record was set in 1981 by John Lewis of Stevensville, who was reported to be casting bloodworms for white perch off the banks of the Mattaponi River. The world record is a 781/2-pound fish landed off Atlantic City, N.J., in 1982. The Virginia freshwater striped bass record weighed 45 pounds, 10 ounces and was caught in mid-February 1995 in Smith Mountain Lake by Mike Rogers.
A couple of days before the Deltaville tournament, Bain said he was fishing along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and ``saw the biggest bite I've ever seen.'' Huge fish were being landed two at a time.
You can get an idea of how enormous the bay stripers are getting when you consider the 10th-place catch in the Deltaville tournament weighed nearly 37 pounds.
Bain estimated the Muse catch was from a pre-recovery spawn in the 1970s. With several years of excellent reproduction in the 1990s, the odds of catching record-breakers in the future are good.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 linesby CNB