Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Trout stalkers
Forget finding the right stretch of river; these anglers have turned trout fishing into a car chase.
Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
Trout are stocked every spring in the Roanoke River and other area streams and brooks.
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As he does many spring mornings, Mark Haupt donned his camouflage shirt Tuesday and headed out for a little stakeout.
He hoped things would go better than the day before.
"I waited here till lunchtime yesterday," he said.
Waiting with him, Robert Jessee tensed.
"I think I just saw it," Jessee said.
But the truck rounding the bend on Route 311 was just a big Ford pickup towing a trailer. It wasn't a tanker truck loaded with thousands of squirming trout.
"It's almost like we're hunting that trout truck," Haupt said, smiling.
Soon, the trout truck arrived. Haupt, Jessee and a half-dozen other men fired up their own trucks and fell in behind. Fifteen minutes later the convoy arrived at the Roanoke River in Salem.
Why wait for the 4 p.m. announcement of the day's stocked waters when you can follow the truck doing the stocking?
"Sometimes when you go down I-581 it looks like a damn funeral procession," Jessee said, laughing. "They're so close it looks like they're on each other's trailer hitches."
The ritual is about more than getting the first crack at trout.
"I like hanging out at the [Orange Market]," Haupt said. "I get to talk to the old guys."
At 29, Haupt is less than half the age of most of the stocking truck stalkers, nearly all of whom are retired. Haupt is hoping to land a job at the Paint Bank hatchery in Craig County, so he often volunteers to help with the actual dumping of the fish.
The others are there for the fellowship and the fish, pretty much in that order.
Corbin Beach and David Etter stake out the truck route most mornings.
"This is a main event for us," said Etter, 74, as he put on his wading boots after the truck reached the river. "We're too old to do much else."
If there is a ringleader to this group it may be Beach, a sprightly 77-year-old with a sly smile.
Tuesday morning he tagged along as the truck made its first few stops at the river. He watched as Haupt and the truck's driver, Ernie "Red" Palmer, dumped nets full of trout into the murky green water.
"I like to know where they put 'em," he said, as Palmer tossed a load of writhing rainbows far into the river. "That Red, he can throw them fish."
Beach often knows where they're going to put them, even though that information is supposed to be a strictly guarded secret. He keeps a log of stocking sites, and can often predict where the trucks and trout are headed next.
"I keep a record on my wildlife calendar," he said. "I figured they would come here today."
George Duckwall, the biologist who oversees the state's trout stocking program, is familiar with the game.
"Some of these guys keep charts, and they're always trying to second-guess us," Duckwall said. "And they're pretty good."
Duckwall recalled a few years back when the department had to stock the Tye River before Memorial Day weekend, at the end of the stocking season.
"We decided to stock it at night," he said. "We waited until it was dark and headed down the road. We got to the bottom of the mountain and there were a dozen cars waiting for us.
"I asked a guy how he knew we were coming. He said, 'Well, you had to stock it before the end of the month, so if you wouldn't have come by tonight, we would have been back out here in the morning.' "
Jessee said the stocking truck drivers sometimes try to trick the Hanging Rock crowd.
"Sometimes they try to fool us and go on that little side road," he said, pointing at Dutch Oven Road. "Or sometimes they'll cut through along Catawba by the cement plant.
"Since they came out with cellphones, it's kind of hard for them to lose us."
Occasionally, the truck followers will get tricked.
A few years ago Duckwall was headed south on I-81 to a meeting at the Marion hatchery.
"I passed the stocking truck and there must have been a dozen cars behind it," Duckwall said.
Duckwall was in his meeting when the same truck showed up -- to transfer fish to the Marion hatchery.
"And there were still four cars behind it," he said, laughing.
Stocking trucks typically service waters closest to their base facility, so truck followers typically don't have too far to go. The Smith River in Henry County and Big Stony Creek in Giles County are about the most distant of the streams served by trucks from Paint Bank.
On those mornings when the truck doesn't come by, the men eventually disperse, heading off to fish previously stocked waters. Or just to bide their time until the next morning.
"We don't really care, because there will be another day for us," Etter said before laughing and looking at Beach. "We hope."
