Thursday, September 04, 2008
Wanted: Smith Mountain Lake muskie -- $10,000 reward!
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
The Cave Spring Optimist Club has been sponsoring a popular spring fishing tournament on Smith Mountain Lake for 40 years. When the group decided to go for its first-ever fall event, to be held Oct. 3-5, Mark Taylor, outdoor columnist for The Roanoke Times, suggested that members needed to create a dash of excitement for it to work.
They’ve done that. The club is offering $10,000 to the contestant who enters the heaviest muskie, one that weighs at least 25 pounds and is entered alive.
Whether that is a safe bet for the club’s money making efforts or reckless abandonment, I will let you decide. But consider this:
>No one has entered a muskie in the spring tournament for the past 19 years.
>The number of Smith Mountain muskie citations registered annually with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries the past five years has ranged from zero to two.
The $10,000 award tells us tons about the quality of muskie fishing in the 20,000 acre lake. The truth is, catching one of these toothy giants is about as likely as winning the lottery, and the Optimist are counting on that.
It wasn’t always that way. For a long while, Smith Mountain was Virginia’s muskie hot spot. It was the home water of the Old Dominion Muskie Hunters Club, an organization founded in 1975 composed of cunning and successful muskie fishermen who specifically and doggedly targeted this species.
For years, Smith Mountain annually produced Virginia’s most and biggest muskie citations. The count reached 52 in 1975. Three years after that, Doug Dellinger entered a 29-pound muskie in the Optimist tournament, the all-time record for the contest.
In 1983, Eddie Meeks, a Franklin County tobacco farmer, cast to a fish rolling at the mouth of Bull Run and landed a then state record 41-pound, 3-ounce muskie.
Meek’s trophy created an abundance of excitement, but it marked the beginning of the end of Smith Mountain’s muskie dominance. As the population began to diminish in the big lake, it accelerated in the James and New rivers. The result was a huge shift to river fishing, and that has not changed.
Department of Game and Inland Fisheries officials began boosting the stockings of muskie in rivers, cutting back on Smith Mountain’s releases, which had reached more than 10,000 in 1978. Four of the last eight years, no muskie has been stocked in the lake.
“The switch to more steams has produced more muskie anglers, and I would propose that the money invested has been better utilized,” said Dan Wilson, DGIF biologist who manages the Smith Mountain Lake fishery.
During the glory years of the '70s and early '80s, muskie also had less competition from other predators in the lake. That meant safety for young fish and plenty of forage for the verocious appetite of the big ones.
“As the number of bass continued to increase, the number of muskie decreased,” said Wilson.
This brings the question: where would a contest angler even go to chance finding a muskie?
“Since the numbers have gone down so much recently, I have concentrated recent stockings, since 2002, in the upper Roanoke River arm of the lake [from Indian Creek to Hardy],” said Wilson.
“Since we have stocked more fish in the upper Roanoke, I have collected more fish in that area during our spring bass samplings,” he said. “But they could show up anywhere.”
Ike Harris, a Cave Spring Optimist Club member, who has worked all 40 tournaments, admits “we are taking a gamble.” So much so that the club couldn’t get an insurance company to cover the $10,000. One of the members did through his business.
Money raised will go for youth cancer research, Harris said.
The contest entry fee is $40, the same as the spring tournament. And like the spring tournament, there will be payoffs in largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, crappie, catfish striped bass and muskie divisions.
Tickets and brochures are available at many tackle shops or via mail. Details may be obtained from 540-721-2451.
In addition, there will be a youth tournament Oct. 4. This one, rightfully, is named for Ike Harris.
