Thursday, May 05, 2005
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Optimist tournament peaceful or competetive, whichever you prefer
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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One thing Dennis Morgan has learned while fishing Smith Mountain Lake, “about 2 o’clock everyone goes home.” That Cinderella time pretty well leaves the 20,000-acre lake all to Morgan, which is just the way he likes it.
He’s not talking about 2 p.m. Rather, 2 a.m. Morgan, who lives in Fincastle, is a night fisherman. He takes over when the day shift leaves. Why?
“It’s peaceful,” he said.
Peaceful isn’t a term normally used to describe a fishing tournament, but Friday morning, at 4:30 a.m., Morgan was in competition with 500 other anglers and a big, old bass. He was working a black, plastic worm near Waterwheel Marina on the Roanoke River arm of the lake when a hefty largemouth sucked it in. Morgan was entered in the 37th edition of the Optimist Club of Cave Spring Fishing Tournament. As far as he can recall, he has fished every one of them.
This isn’t a hard-nosed bass tournament. It is laid back. A duffer is just as likely to win as a pro. Sixteen-year-olds go against 70-year olds. One year a winner was James Dudley who previously had qualified for the prestigious Bassmasters Classic. Another year 15-year old Anthony Hackney won while casting from a dock.
Contestants fish for the biggest fish, not pounds of fish. Skill counts, but luck counts more. You can be as aggressive as you like or you can take a nap in your boat. You can fish as much or as little as you wish anytime from Friday morning to Noon Sunday. You can target largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, crappie, walleye, catfish or muskie. Or you can just cast and hope and be happy with whichever of these happens to hit your lure or bait.
That’s what Jessie Hubbard of Lynchburg was doing. In fact, truthfully, he had tried to catch a contest-category fish with little success so when it got dark Friday night he and his buddies turned to striped bass. Striped bass aren’t part of this contest, “but we like to eat them,” said Hubbard.
Hubbard likes to eat most any kind of fish. Two years ago in the Optimist tournament he caught a nice walleye. At that moment, the pan looked more promising than the leader board, so Hubbard and his buddies had a fish fry. As it turned out, no one in the contest entered a walleye, so Hubbard’s fish would have earned the $1,000 first-place prize, had he entered it. That would have bought a lot of salmon steaks. Hubbard likes to laugh about it. He is a jolly man.
This time, he was casting a Rat-L-Trap lure near Saunders Marina when something hit it hard. A striper? No, it didn’t feel like a striper. It was a bass. A smallmouth bass. A big one.
“That’s a nice smallmouth,” his buddy said. “You ought to enter it.”
Hubbard wasn’t sure it was big enough to make the tournament leader board, but he headed up the lake to contest headquarters at Foxport Marina. The fish weighed 4.26 pounds, the biggest in the smallmouth category. Hubbard took home the winning $1,000 check plus a $300 bonus and the Ozzie Worley trophy. Worley is the late outdoor editor of the old Roanoke World News. He helped get the contest started. He liked trout best, but next to that smallmouth were his favorite.
Morgan’s bass weighed 7.48 pounds and was the winner in the largemouth category.
Jeffrey Hodges of Rocky Mount won the crappie category with a hefty 2.74-pound catch while Mike Savo of Salem reeled in the top catfish, a blue cat that weighed 29.50 pounds. (Check my field notes for youth winners.)
If you press Dennis Morgan for the reason he has fished the 37 tournaments he will think a moment then say, “It’s for a good cause.”
The idea of the contest is to raise money for the fine youth work of the Cave Spring Optimist Club. Sometimes that gets lost in the shuffle. Ike Harris, charter member and club workhorse, estimates that the tournament has raised more than $1 million through the years. The contest keeps a smile on the face of a lot of kids long after the last fish has wiggled on the scales.
