THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410230164
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB HUTCHINSON
LENGTH: Long : 126 lines
Thousands of Virginia anglers are ready and waiting for the saltwater striped bass season to begin.
It opens in less than four days - about 88 hours from the time you read this, assuming that will be at 8:01 a.m. Sunday. Starting time will be 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
Once again, Virginia anglers will have a Chesapeake Bay striper season running a total of 32 days. Fishing will be legal from 12:01 a.m. Thursday through midnight Sunday each week through Dec. 18.
But as a bonus, striper fishing will be allowed in the ocean from Dec. 19 through March 31. The boundary between Bay and ocean will be the state's Line of Demarcation, drawn between Cape Charles Lighthouse on Smith Island on the Eastern Shore and Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia Beach.
During the early season, anglers will be limited to two fish a day, with a minimum size of 18 inches. Additionally, the 36-inch maximum in effect the past two years has been eliminated.
For the ocean season, the bag limit will be one fish a day, with a 28-inch minimum and no maximum.
Citation awards for big fish will be available from the Virginia Salt Water Fishing Tournament only during open seasons and days. The awards will end when the contest closes at midnight Dec. 31.
Awards will be available for boated fish weighing at least 40 pounds and for released fish measuring at least 44 inches, according to Claude Bain, tournament director.
During closed days and before and after the seasons, anglers will be allowed to fish for stripers but will not be able to keep them. In fact, some good hauls have been made over the past few weeks. The fish have been hitting at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, the Monitor-Merrimack Bridge Tunnel and the James River Bridge.
Stripers also have been showing throughout the lower parts of Virginia's major rivers, including the James and Elizabeth. And, they have been hitting along the Eastern Shore bayside, off Tangier Island and in the Hot Ditch at the Virginia Power plant in the Gilmerton section of Chesapeake.
The season's biggest fish are yet to come, with most stripers now running between 3 and 8 pounds. Larger fish, those of 30 inches and more, will start showing along the Chesapeake Bay crossing in mid-November, with the peak action most likely between Thanksgiving and Dec. 15.
If history repeats, the year's biggest stripers will be boated on the Smith Island Flats, southwest of Smith Island Lighthouse, during the late ocean season. Some of those could top 50 pounds, and it's possible that someone could break the state record of 61 pounds, set by John T. Lewis on the Mattaponi River, a tributary of the York River, in 1981.
STRIPER ADD: Regulations for the 1995 striped bass season may not be relaxed as much as anglers had hoped. For one thing, it's almost certain there will not be a 1995 spring season.
Preliminary results of a tagging program of stripers wintering in the ocean off Virginia and North Carolina indicate that most of these fish are from the Chesapeake Bay. That's contrary to what some scientists had long surmised. This means the information will have to be re-evaluated before 1995 regulations are finalized.
However, it will have no bearing on the scientific report, released earlier this year, that East Coast striped bass stocks will be ``fully recovered'' by Jan. 1, 1995.
What all of this means, says Jack Travelstead of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, is that it will be May at the earliest before regulations for next year's striper fishing are announced.
``I don't think the new information will have any bearing on the 1995 fall season, when we'll see a liberalization of both the recreational and commercial catch,'' Travelstead said.
CITATIONS COMING: If you won a citation from the 1993 Virginia Salt Water Fishing Tournament, it should be arriving soon.
That's the latest from Bain, director of the state-sponsored contest, who said all 2,500 1993 award winners should receive their plaques by the end of November.
Delivery was promised last spring, but production problems developed in a new processing method. The lettering, which includes the angler's name and residence, and species and weight of the catch, bled when the citations were plasticized with a hot laminate.
Bain said the process had been changed, with a cold laminate now being used.
``It works real well, and in the future, it's going to make delivery a lot quicker and production a lot easier,'' he said. ``But for now, all we can do is apologize to the folks who haven't received their awards.''
QUAIL UP: After years of dismal news from the world of the bobwhite quail, there finally is something good to report.
Quail, known simply as ``birds'' to most dedicated hunters, should be slightly more abundant in the Tidewater and Eastern Piedmont sections of Virginia, said Mike Fies, a biologist with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
While loss of habitat contines to take its toll of quail, this summer's rainfall was adequate for ``normal reproductive success,'' Fies said.
Drought conditions can decimate young birds during the summer, he said, and can even hamper nesting success.
``If rainfall is scarce during the summer, it usually translates into another meager harvest,'' Fies said.
He said the average number of quail bagged during the 1993-94 season was 0.32 birds per hour, down 16 percent from the mediocre 1992-93 season and the lowest the agency has ever recorded.
HEARINGS SET: The Virginia Marine Resources Commission is expected to approve spending $57,896 from the sale of saltwater fishing licenses to study the importance of menhaden as a forage fish for other Chesapeake Bay species.
The matter came before the commission at its September meeting. But the agency delayed a decision until this month in order to study the idea further and to give representatives of the menhaden industry a chance to examine the plan.
Also before the commission at its Tuesday meeting will be proposals to limit the blue crab catch and to transfer part of the commercial catch of flounder from inshore to offshore fishermen.
SHORT CASTS: More than 3,500 pounds of quality meat has been processed through the ``Hunters for the Hungry'' program. Under the program, hunters donate their bagged deer to those in need, working through meat-processing facilities. In Hampton Roads, Earl Edmondson of Central Meat Packing on Centerville Turnpike in Chesapeake receives and prepares venison. The statewide program hopes to produce more than 100,000 pounds of meat this year. Sports Association hopes to place free information in 100,000 schools by the end of 1996. The program's theme highlights the success of sportsman-supported wildlife management in restoring once-threatened speciese to abundance. . . . Curt Lytle of Suffolk is one of 30 anglers to qualify for Operation Bass' Red Man Regional largemouth bass tournament Nov. 2-5 at Pickwick Lake near Florence, Ala. . . . Recreational vehicles are growing in appeal to younger people, according to a recent survey by pollster Louis Harris. The survey showed that more than half the buyers of new RVs are between 30 and 49. This is several years younger than indicated by a similar poll a decade ago. by CNB