Sunday, August 24, 2008
Quality over quantity
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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GLADYS -- With its combination of shade, depth, current and woody cover, the little slot looked like the kind of place where a big smallmouth bass would be hanging out.
And it was.
The lure had gurgled along the surface for just a second when a huge smallmouth bass erupted on the bait, porpoising out of the water like a killer whale attacking a seal.
"I've got a giant!" I screamed to Roanoke Times photographer Sam Dean, who had temporarily traded his cameras for a fly rod and was fishing a nearby riffle.
And I was already thanking Scott Smith.
A fisheries biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Smith has for years been urging me to take a break from the smallmouth rivers around Roanoke where I normally fish and head southeast to the Staunton River downstream of Leesville Dam.
He often calls the river a "sleeper," a good fishery that doesn't get much attention.
"You won't catch as many fish as you typically would in the Shenandoah or the James," Smith said Tuesday afternoon when I called to tell him I was making the Staunton my final stop on my eight-week Summer Smallmouth Tour through Virginia. "But they'll be bigger."
Bigger?
There's nothing wrong with bigger.
There's another supersized thing about the Staunton River, which is known as the Roanoke River from its upstream origins until it emerges from Leesville Dam. Because of limited public access points, float trips are on the long side.
For example, the route from the public access at Long Island to Brookneal is 11 miles. That's a pretty good day of paddling, and pretty much impossible if you plan to spend much time fishing.
Camping is one option, although floaters must either get permission from streamside landowners or stay on an in-stream island.
Another option is to obtain permission to launch or take out on private property to make for a shorter float. That's the route we took, meeting Shelton Miles at his riverside farm upstream from Long Island about 9 a.m.
Miles makes his living running cattle on the 300-acre tract, which has been a working farm since 1844, and also as the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Republican Grove in Halifax County.
He's also been deeply involved with issues revolving around the Staunton River, and that activism helped him get one of seven spots on the state water control board.
"They told me it would be four days a year," Miles said of that commitment. "Last year I got per diem for 18 full days, and that doesn't count the parts of a lot more days I spent on it."
Miles had a church obligation around midday so he was able to join us just long enough to set a shuttle and for a few minutes of fishing.
We launched at the upper end of his property on a steep, well-worn bank that had the appearance of a big otter slide. It's a spot where groups from churches slide into the river during the tubing events Miles hosts at the place.
Years of regular powerful discharges from Leesville Dam helped shape those steep banks.
Discharge variances were extreme, with regularly scheduled releases varying from a roaring 9,000 cubic feet per second to a trickling flow of less than 100 cfs.
These days there are more releases so the variance isn't so extreme. The moderation has helped the river's creatures, from damselflies to crawfish, minnows to catfish.
"And it means the river is chock full of smallmouth bass," Miles said.
The Staunton River system remains controversial, especially in dry years such as the one we're experiencing. Just a few days before the float, a public meeting on flow variances from Leesville Dam drew such a massive crowd that it had to be relocated to a football stadium.
For hours, concerned citizens pleaded their positions. Some want less water released to preserve water levels at Smith Mountain Lake. Others who say release levels must be maintained to keep the Staunton River downstream alive and a viable recreation destination.
While the river attracts lots of canoeists on weekends, weekdays are fairly quiet. At least this one was. We didn't see another boat in the not-quite 4 miles from Miles' farm to Long Island.
Appropriately, Miles was the first one to connect with a bass.
He smiled broadly as he hoisted the 6-inch smallmouth that had hit a Rebel Wee Craw crankbait.
"It's a real monster," he joked.
Sam hooked up a short time later with similar-sized fish that hit his black woolly bugger streamer.
Hoping to entice a bigger bite, I started off with the same Sizmic Toad topwater bait that had brought me excellent action on the South Fork of the Shenandoah not quite a week earlier.
With the big fish in this river, surely it was only a matter of time. But as time went on and the toad gurgled back to me untouched on cast after cast, my faith waned.
And then came the explosion.
The bass was a solid 14-incher, a pretty good start. Thirty minutes later the lure produced a 12-incher.
Things got quiet for a while, in part because the river became slow and shallow and an upstream wind was forcing us to work hard on the paddles.
As the river's speed picked up again, so did the fishing, with the peak along a shaded bank.
On the first huge strike I managed to wait, reel up the slack and set the hook. My line flew back at me with no lure on it. The knot had failed.
A few minutes later a big bass swirled at the toad the second it hit the water, then returned and pummelled it. Sam's jaw dropped. But then my hookset pulled the toad free.
Then came the killer whale.
At the sting of the hook the bass headed under a log and the lure pulled.
I wasn't supposed to catch that bass, or the two other big ones before it.
No, this was how this eight-week smallmouth odyssey needed to come to a close, with me standing knee deep in a cool Virginia river, shaking, smiling and already planning the next trip.
THE PLACE: The Staunton (Roanoke) River near Long Island
THE FISHERY: The river holds a decent population of smallmouth bass, with fair numbers of fish in the 14- to 17-inch size range.
REGULATIONS: Regular bass regulations apply. The Department of Environmental Quality has issued a fish consumption advisory of no more than two meals per month due to PCBs contamination.
ACCESS: Public ramps are available at Long Island and Brookneal. Many fishermen use informal launching areas at bridges and from private land.
GEAR: Medium casting gear (10-pound mono) with a pumpkin/chartreuse Sizmic Toad lure; 5-weight fly rod with black and white woolly bugger streamers
THE TALLY: About 20 bass ranging from 6 to 14 inches. Most fish were in the 10- to 12-inch range.
