MARK TAYLOR The Roanoke Times

Dylan Cooper of Luray laughs about the tiny smallmouth bass he caught on a plastic lizard lure during a float trip Friday on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River near Shenandoah. Below: The first fish of the day for Roanoke Times outdoors editor Mark Taylor was this 17-inch smallmouth bass.

Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.

mark.taylor
@roanoke.com
981-3395

Mark Taylor

Outdoors coverage

• Notebook: Outer Banks beach-driving plan kicks up sand
• Outdoors commentary: Many Sunday hunting cons
• Winter tourneys invite fishermen out in the cold
• Visit our Outdoors page

The Wild Life blog

• I can focus on Sunday hunting negatives, too
• Big bass lure winter fishermen
• Ralph Barton takes a great late-season doe the hard way
• More from Mark's blog

SHENANDOAH -- Eleven hours is a long time to do anything.

Even fish.

So Dylan Cooper could have been forgiven for kicking back and chilling at the end of what had been a marathon day of float fishing Friday on the South Fork of the Shenandoah River.

But this kid was not about to ease up down the home stretch.

"One more cast," he said, flinging a buzzbait into the river's cool, clear waters.

It had been a day of casts, probably more than a thousand.

And a day of fish. By then Dylan had caught 110 bass.

He just couldn't get enough.

And, really, neither could I.

It had been great to spend the day in a canoe with a 15-year-old fishing fanatic for whom summertime paradise is a river full of smallmouth bass.

I had connected with Dylan and his dad, Bill, for the seventh stop on what I'm calling the Summer Smallmouth Tour, an eight-week exploration of some of Virginia's most intriguing smallmouth bass fishing waters.

Such a journey had to include the Shenandoah system, one of Virginia's best known smallmouth waters but one that has fallen on hard times, with fish kills hitting each of the past five years.

The kills, the cause of which remains a mystery, have persisted, varying in seriousness and scope.

Scientists estimate that in some Shenandoah River sections as many as 80 percent of the adult smallmouth bass have perished in a single year.

The Coopers, who live in Luray, have become key citizen participants in the efforts to monitor the problem, sending frequent detailed reports to the Shenandoah River Fish Kill Task Force.

In fact, when I mentioned my desire to visit the Shenandoah to task force co-leaders Don Kain and Steve Reeser, scientists with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, respectively, they quickly suggested the Coopers.

The Coopers' reports this year have been generally positive for this 6-mile stretch of river.

This spring and early summer they caught some fish with lesions, but the bass population has been solid. In his best trip Dylan caught 203 bass.

That's not a guess.

On his belt loop Dylan wears a mechanical counter, punching the button each time he boats and releases a bass.

Dylan hooked and boated his fourth smallmouth -- he had caught three while waiting for me and his dad to set up the shuttle -- about 30 seconds later.

The bass was about 9 inches long, and appeared perfectly healthy. The river is chock full of these fish.

Recent spawning class success has been remarkable, filling the system with hordes of new baby bass each summer.

Plenty of those young bass have survived and are growing fast.

Larger bass are a different story.

Before the fish kills started, Dylan had caught plenty of nice bass, including two smallmouths that stretched to 19 inches and several largemouths topping 5 pounds.

"But this summer my biggest bass has been 17^1/₂ inches long," said Dylan, a rising sophomore and ace student at Luray High School who hopes to become a fisheries biologist.

_{Given this scarcity of larger bass, I was probably not smart in starting out fishing something of a big fish bait -- a Sizmic Toad topwater lure that's essentially a buzzbait.}

_{Fifteen minutes after we launched, the lure was gurgling back to me when it disappeared in an explosive boil.}

_{A couple of minutes later Dylan netted the fat 17-incher for me.}

_{I couldn't help but laugh at the irony that, of all the places I'd fished this summer where smallmouth bass this size are fairly common, I had pulled my best fish of the Smallmouth Tour from a river where bass this size are rare.}

_{Throughout the day I rotated between the Sizmic Toad and big Senko and Slurpies soft stickbaits. Dylan mostly used a 4-inch plastic lizard, but occasionally would pick up rods rigged with a small Rapala plug and a topwater popper.}

_{"I keep three rods rigged because I don't like to change lures," he said. "It wastes too much time."}

_{Bill Cooper, a retired sheet metal worker, was in the other canoe with the family's chocolate lab, Bear. He fished mostly with a small lizard, too.}

_{Dylan and his dad hooked five fish for each one I hooked, with Bill Cooper adding an estimated 50 to 75 fish to the family's tally.}

_{I was content to hope for fewer, bigger bites. Throughout the day I managed a 16-incher, a 15-incher, two 14-inchers and probably two-dozen bass in the 10- to 12-inch range.}

_{Dylan caught enough stout bass -- including a beautiful 18-inch largemouth -- that I felt comfortable razzing him each time he caught another 6-incher.}

_{"You're not going to count that one, are you?" I'd tease as he smiled.}

_Click.

_{When Dylan hit 100, he retired the lizard and went with the buzzbait, which produced some memorable blowups and a few of his best bass of the day.}

_{In one section, he spotted a nice smallmouth and largemouth hanging out together. He made a cast and the largemouth exploded on the lure. Dylan was so shocked he missed the hookset. I threw the toad to the spot and one of the bass blew up on it. I missed, too.}

_{We both cracked up, a couple of giddy, fish-crazy kids doing what they love on a Virginia summer evening.}

THE PLACE: South Fork Shenandoah River

ACCESS: Public launch ramps are available at Shenandoah and downstream near the tiny community of Grove Hill.

THE FISHERY: This section of river has endured five years of fish kills relatively well. The river has high numbers of smallmouth bass up to 11 inches, but larger fish are fairly rare.

REGULATIONS: Five bass per day. No bass between 14 and 20 inches. Only one bass over 20 inches. Fish consumption advisory is to eat no more than two meals per month due to mercury pollution.

THE GEAR: Medium-light spinning and casting gear. Lures included 4-inch Bass Pro Shops plastic lizards (pumpkin colored), Sizmic Toad (green pumpkin and chartreuse); 5-inch Northland Slurpies and Senko soft stickbaits; and a ¹₈-ounce buzzbait (orange, yellow and chartreuse).

THE TALLY: 11 hours of fishing produced about 200 smallmouth bass and about a dozen largemouth bass, all released. Biggest largemouth was 18 inches, biggest smallmouth 17 inches (above).