RECORD CATFISH FROM KERR
When an angler catches a state record fish, we outdoor writers frequently say so-and-so "broke" the record. This time, maybe we should use the word "demolished" the record.

Early reports say that’s exactly what William Zoft of Roxboro, N.C., did this week when he landed a 92.28-pound blue catfish. No, this isn’t another in a long line of jumbo-size James River cats. Zoft was reported to be fishing near the mouth of Bluestone Creek at Kerr Lake when he hooked the fish. It took him 20 minutes to boat it.

Nothing is official yet, but according to Jack Randolph, who compiles a weekly fishing report highlighted on this site, said everything appears to be legitimate for Zoft’s fish to become a Virginia record. It can take several weeks for a record catch to be certified.

"Warren Weston, who is a regular reporter for this fishing report, tells me that the fish was weighed on his certified scales (at Weston’s Grocery in Red Oak, Va.) and witnessed by the appropriate Game Department personnel," Randolph said.

The fish was a pot-bellied female with an empty, post-spawn stomach. She might have gone 100 pounds or more a few weeks earlier when full of eggs.

Zoft was said to be using 40-pound test Berkley Big Cat line on an Ambassadeur 5500 reel.

Huge catfish have been a common catch at 50,000-acre Kerr, along the Virginia-North Carolina border, but fish from the James River have dominated the record book —until now. The current record is 75.4-pound James River fish landed April 30 by Vernon McCann of Chesapeake.

WRITERS LURED TO RONAOKE
Mark Taylor, outdoor editor of The Roanoke Times, called me as soon as he returned home from a trip to Spokane, Wash. Stay well, he said. Taylor broke the news to me that Roanoke had won the bid to host the 2007 convention of the Outdoor Writer Association of American.

Why was the health of an old-timer like me suddenly important to Taylor? I serve as co-chairman of the conference with him, so he wants me around, even through I figure he will be doing most of the heavy lifting, as has been the case so far.

Roanoke won the bid following some incredibly hard work in competition with 15 cities across the nation. The final three, in addition to Roanoke, were Bismark, N.D. and Duluth, Minn. The choice was made at the June OWAA conference in Spokane.

Gov. Mark Warner called it a "home run" for tourism and outdoor recreation in Virginia. He said 600 to 700 outdoor journalists will converge on Roanoke June 14-20, 2007, when the convention will be headquartered at Hotel Roanoke.

The event will showcase Virginia’s outdoors from the mountains to the sea at a time the state is celebrating the 400th anniversary of American’s birthplace at Jamestown. The economic impact will be significant, Warner said. It will be more than that your average major convention, because participants are expected to write articles about what they find in Virginia, thus exposing millions of people to the state’s outdoors.

That’s why the state has spent nearly a year wooing the convention. The victory, to a large degree, can be credited to Alisa Bailey, president and CEO of the Virginia Tourism Corporation, and the staff of the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Mark and I provided some expertise, but now our job, for the most part, will be to stand around talking about how great outdoor sports are in Virginia, which shouldn’t be too difficult, even for an old guy.

DGIF BUDGET APPROVED
The board of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries approved a $44,753,242 budget for fiscal year 2005. This is under the cap of $44,946,917 allocated by the General Assembly. The current budget is $41,402,564.

Budget additions included just over one-half million dollars toward an automated license system and $10,000 to cover visitation at trout hatcheries, which was discontinued last year when funds ran short. The agency is in the process of setting up a fee system for hatcheries where visitors will be charged $1.

For the first time, the budget contains money to financially award staff members who meet predetermined goals.

The 2004 General Assembly gave the DGIF authority to raise hunting and fishing license and boat registration fees beginning this month, but the agency has not announced plans to do so. Look for that to occur later this year.

TESTING, TESTING, TESTING
The Department of Game Fisheries has been testing a new telephone big game checking system this week that it hopes to have online by the fall hunting seasons. Leaders of the National Wild Turkey Federation along with DEMAP operators are among those who have been asked to test call the system as if they were checking game.

Some glitches have been found, as might be expected. One hunter said he tried to check a pretend 20-point buck and the system turned him down. He said it took him a lengthy 9.5 minutes to check a deer and turkey.

The idea is to expose "bugs" and to see what works with simplicity and what doesn’t, officials said.

SALTWATER FISHING HIGHLIGHTS
*Offshore water has been producing excellent action for yellowfin tuna, along with some bluefin tuna, dolphin and marline. Strikes are so abundant that some boats are using as many as six packs of ballyhoo per day, one captain reported.

*Flounder fishing suddenly is improving following a mostly lackluster season. Catches are picking up on the seaside of Eastern Shore, but the biggest fish are being landed in their summer haunts located in the Chesapeake. Some 90 citations have been registered in the Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament.

FRESHWATER FISHING HIGHLIGHTS
*Eddie Allen at Allen’s Bait and Boats on Chickhominy Lake says bluegill fishing is outstanding with limit catches common.

*Fishing for catfish is improving in the falls area of the James River at Richmond. Guide Mike Ostrander of the James River Fishing School said his clients recently caught 44 flathead catfish along with a few blue cats and channel cats. One flathead weighed 25 pounds.

*Greg and Shirley Rose of Prince George caught a limit of shellcrackers, mostly on red worms, at Little Creek Reservoir. Sixteen were over a pound and seven went 1.5 pounds.

*Smallmouth bass fishing has been picking up in the New River, where night fishermen are catching some of the biggest fish.

*Trout fishing is enjoying its traditional July upswing at Lake Moomaw. Some fish are being caught deep. Ed Bechmer of Staunton got a 7.03-pound rainbow at 60 feet.

*Cooler than normal temperatures have helped keep the bass shallow at Lake Anna where boat docks, stumps and brush piles are holding fish.

*The Rappahannock Rier is loaded with channel catfish.

OUTDOOR BRIEFS
*Remember the little hunting law digest you used to stuff in your shirt pocket? Well, the 2004-05 regulation handout is in a 64-page magazine format. The format change began last year with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries saying the bigger design would save money and provide more information. This year’s handout is nearly twice as fat as last years. In addition to regulation information, it contains 27 pages on wildlife management, hunting areas and other data.

*Danny Thorn has stepped down as president of the Virginia Bear Hunters Association, a position he has held for six years. The new president is Este Fisher, from Rockingham County. "I have the organization headed in the right direction and I thought it was time to get some new people involved," Thorn said.

*A total of 451,374 fingerling striped bass were released last month at 14 sites in Smith Mountain Lake. This was the full allocation for the lake, plus extras. Fish officials gave consideration to reducing the stocking because of parasite problems, then decided to go with the full release. Members of the Smith Mountain Striper Club assisted in the stocking, which took place at nine sites on the Roanoke River side of the lake and five on the Blackwater River side.

*Hunters in West Virginia reported killing 10,461 turkeys during the recent spring gobbler season. That was a 16.5-percent decline from the previous year. Officials say the drop was related to poor brood production in both 2002 and 2003, the result of cold, wet weather during the hatching process.

*Baxter I. Bell has been named Virginia Game Warden of the Year. Bell currently works in James City County.

*Still another snakehead fish has been caught in Little Hunting Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River, this one a 15-inch mature female carrying eggs. It was the third one of these undesirable critters caught in the creek.

*The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries announced that the Ragged Island Wildlife Management Area will be closed temporarily to public access beginning today and lasting until further notice. The site will undergo renovations and repairs to damage caused by Hurricane Isabel.

*Yamaha Motor Corp. USA has denied rumors that it will post significant price increases on its outboard engines. That’s just wishful thinking on the part of some competitors, said a company spokesman. Those competitors, he said, are desperately trying to sell two-stroke outboards in the face of continued growth in demand for four-stroke engines like Yamaha produces.

*How important is wearing a life jacket while boating? Well, it can do more than save your hide. Mark Menendez fishing in the recent Bassmaster Elite 50 tournament disqualified himself and lost his final-round catch after realizing he had failed to wear a personal flotation device while fishing an area where it was mandatory to wear one.

VIRGINIA SALTWATER FISHING TOURNAMENT
The Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament has new leaders in the dolphin, sheephead and spadefish categories. Here are the standings:

BLACK DRUM: 95 pounds, Joseph Roub, Baltimore, Md., Hog Island Bay.

COBIA: 83 pounds, Scott Breeden, Hampton, lower-western Chesapeake Bay.

CROAKER: 5 pounds, Jarvis Taylor, Richmond, lower York River.

DOLPHIN: 43 pounds, 6 ounces, Steve Richardson, Virginia Beach, off Virginia Beach.

FLOUNDER: 12 pounds, 10 ounces, Leah Hunger, Virginia Beach, lower-eastern Chesapeake Bay.

GRAY TROUT:

12 pounds, 12 ounces, Greg Thayer, Gloucester, upper-eastern Chesapeake Bay.

KINGFISH: 1 pound, 14 ounce, Bobby Smith, Portsmouth, lower-western Chesapeake Bay.

SEA BASS: 6 pounds, 8 ounces, Mark Fueller, Rio Grande, N.J., off Virginia Beach.

SHEEPHEAD: 13 pounds, 2 ounces, C.C. Wilson, Virginia Beach, lower western Chesapeake Bay.

SPADEFISH: 13 pounds, 10 ounces, Jake Mapp, Franktown, upper-eastern Chesapeake Bay.

SPECKLED TROUT: 12 pounds, 14 ounces, Ivan Hutton, Virginia Beach, Elizabeth River.

SPOT: 1 pound, 4 ounces, Gilbert Smith, Charles City, lower Rappahannock River.

STRIPED BASS: 63 pound state record, Carolyn Brown, Virginia Beach, off the Virginia Coast.

TAUTOG: 22 pounds, 9 ounces, Julie Ball, Virginia Beach, off Virginia Beach.

TUNA: 112 pounds, 4 ounces, Alan Ellison, Fruitland, Md. off Eastern Shore.

MEETINGS/EVENTS/SEASONS
Meeting of the Smith Mountain Striper Club, 7 p.m., July 2, Moneta Community Center, guest speaker Warren Turner, president of the National Striped Bass Association.

Virginia Trappers Association’s Convention and Sportsman’s Show, July 23-25, Luray, $5 admission, primitive camping available, information from Bryan Nelson, redfox12172@netscape.net.

The Triangle Bowhunters of the New River Valley has announced it schedule of three 3-D archery events on its property between Christiansburg and Blacksburg. Dates for the events are July 25, Aug. 22 and Sept. 19. Information is available from www.vfaa.org or from Jim Overfelt, jimo@vt.edu.

Bassmaster Classic, July 30-Aug. 1, Lake Wylie/Charlotte, N.C.

Mother-Daughter Outdoors Event, Aug. 20-22, Appomattox, opportunity for women 9 and up to learn outdoor skills. Information from www.dgif.state.va.us/events/index.html.

Virginia Outdoors Weekend, Sept. 17-19, for families, Westmoreland State Park, information from www.dgif.state.va.us/events/index.html.

Smith Mountain Striper Club fall tournament, Oct. 9., information from Rex Smith, smithrex@charter.net.

CITGO Bassmaster Open tournament, Oct. 14-16, Smith Mountain Lake.

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