Thursday, June 11, 2009
Robby Rakes catches state record, but he's not the only one grinning
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Robby Rakes with 13 pound state record hybrid.
Virginia finally has a hybrid striped bass in its freshwater record book, and two guys have big grins over that honor.
One is Robby Rakes of Christiansburg, who on May 13 landed a 13 pound hybrid in the New River below Claytor Lake Dam. Who says 13 is unlucky?
The other guy with a grin is Mike Smith of Boones Mill a striper and hybrid fan who in mid-2007 campaigned successfully for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to establish a category for this species in the state record system. When DGIF complied, it set a 10 pound minimum and no one entered a fish that big for more than a year.
That ended when Rakes decided to use some free time from his car sales business to fish the Claytor Dam tailrace. He was night fishing when something powerful hit his Rapala Super Shad about 10:30 p.m. Rakes figured it was either a striper, muskie or hybrid, which is a cross between a white bass and striped bass.
“Pound for pound, hybrids are the hardest fighting freshwater fish that is stocked,” said Smith, who has stalked them and big stripers in Virginia and other states.
DGIF officials have been concerned that anglers might have difficulty distinguishing between a striper and hybrid when it came to entering a fish for citation or record status.
That was no problem for Rakes. The 20 inch girth of his fish almost equaled its 28 inch length, giving it more of the rounded look of a white bass than the streamlined look of a striper. Hybrids also can be distinguished by their black lateral lines, which are much more broken than those of a striper.
One of the most unusual aspects of Rakes’ catch is where it was hooked. Hybrids stockings take place in Claytor Lake not the New River. Either the fish came through the dam or traveled miles up the New River from stockings in West Virginia’s Bluestone Lake.
When the fish was weighed the next day after the catch, the scales dipped to 13.044 pounds. The biologist who examined the catch rounded it off to 13 pounds.
Smith believes there are even bigger hybrids to be had. “There are some in there much bigger,” he predicted. The record in Tennessee is 23 pounds.
Hybrids have been stocked in Claytor Lake since 1993. Most years, the 4,475-acre lake gets 33,500 hybrids and about twice that many striped bass, giving it a generous combined release of 22.5 fish per acre.
Flannagan Reservoir also has been receiving hybrids on an annual basis since 1999. Surveys have turned up fish there that weighed just over 10 pounds. The antidotal reports of anglers indicate catches up to 13 pounds have been taken.
State fish biologists have a policy of reframing from stocking hybrids in water where natural reproduction of striped bass occurs, such as the Roanoke and James rivers. Yet Smith says he has caught hybrids in excess of 10 pounds in Leesville Lake which is on the Roanoke River.
In Claytor, stripers tend to inhabit the deeper water where they feed on baitfish. Hybrids can thrive in warmer, shallower water where their diet is more varied that that of alewife-gulping stripers.
One of the things that endears hybrids to anglers like Smith, who makes his own top-water lures, is their readiness to strike on the surface, and the fact that they fight like a mule when hooked.
“This has always been my favorite fish,” Smith said.
