Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Fishing good alternative to deer hunting
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Look on the cover of most hunting and fishing magazines this month or at newspaper outdoors reports and it's pretty easy to guess what you'll see: white-tailed deer.
And it makes sense.
In the late fall, whitetails are the king. Virginia alone has an estimated 300,000 deer hunters.
But while at times it may seem like everyone is out there trying to put a deer tag on a trophy buck in November, there is actually other stuff going on.
The appearance of the parking lot for the day hike to McAfee Knob on Saturday was a good example.
The lot, which was expanded a few years back, was so jammed at 4 p.m. that hikers had taken to parking on the shoulder of U.S. 311.
With leaves at their peak and the weather mild, it's prime time for hiking or mountain biking in the woods.
Many hikers and bikers prefer to avoid areas where there's much hunting, and they have plenty of options, such as the Peaks of Otter, Shenandoah National Park, Mill Mountain and Explore Park.
Fishing is another outdoors activity that is attractive for its hard-core fan base. Anglers are finding a mixed bag.
At Smith Mountain Lake, stripers are moving into the upper reaches of the Roanoke and Blackwater river arms, according to Mike Snead at the Virginia Outdoorsman in Moneta.
Most striper fishermen are targeting the fish with live bait pulled behind the boats with a combination of downlines and planer board rigs.
"They're finding smaller groups and schools," Snead said.
Bass fishing action has been mixed, but tending toward the tough side.
Two weekends ago, 70 teams showed up for the fundraising tournament for local angler Bill Wilson, who is battling cancer.
"Out of all of those boats there was only one five-fish limit," Snead said. "In all my years here, I don't think I've ever heard of a tournament that had 70 boats and only one five-fish limit."
Things were a little better this past weekend at The Bass Federation's charity tournament for the Children's Miracle Network.
There were several limits in the 54-boat field. Tracey Bowles of Roanoke and Kenny Newton of Salem had the best one, with their five-fish coming in at 15.78 pounds.
Bowles declined to offer details on the team's effective patterns because Newton plans to fish in another tournament this coming weekend.
Snead said a variety of tactics are being used for bass.
Some anglers are managing to catch fish on topwater baits in the morning. Spinnerbaits have been working for some fishermen, while others are just content to hammer docks and other structure with jigs.
While bass fishing is generally tough, crappie fishing continues to improve as the fish move from the depths where they spent the summer back toward nearshore structure for a final feeding binge before the winter.
Crappie anglers are catching good numbers of decent-sized fish.
"The crappie fishing has really been good here at the lake the past couple years," Snead said.
Some local crappie fanatics have been hitting the lake hard in anticipation of an upcoming Crappie USA tournament that will be held on Nov. 15.
For locals who'd like to face off against touring pros expected to compete, registration is still open. Fees vary by division but range from $100 to $300. More information is available at crappieusa.com.
This is also the time of year when fishing can really explode along the coast.
If you don't want to be tempted to make the long trip to North Carolina's Outer Banks, don't read the online fishing reports. If you do you'll see that fishing for red drum has been excellent.
I've gotten first-hand reports, too. James Horn of New Castle and several buddies just got back from the Outer Banks, where Horn reported that the drum action was excellent. He also said nice speckled trout "were everywhere."
In the lower Chesapeake Bay, striper fishing has been good.
Anglers casting plugs around the islands of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel can catch plenty of schoolie-sized stripers. Trolling deep-running plugs and bucktails on wire-line rigs around the pilings is producing some better fish.
The really big fish still haven't arrived from their summering grounds off the Northeast coast, but should start reaching the area within a couple of weeks as long as the water continues to cool.
In fact, the fishing for big stripers usually starts getting really good about the time the deer hunting action up here starts really slowing down.
