Friday, January 01, 2010
The best of 2009 for Virginia's sportsmen
Spencer Roberts, 14, of Wytheville was among the thousands of teens who, with adult supervision, took advantage of a new youth deer hunting day in late September.
Tim Wilson and Danny Ayers teamed up to pull a 102-pound blue catfish from the lower James River in May. The fish was the first registered freshwater fish in Virginia to top 100 pounds.
Nathan Wimmer, 18, shot this black bear with his bow in the Bent Mountain area of Roanoke County. With expanded seasons, bear hunters may top the record kill of 2,204 set in 2008.
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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The Wild Life blog
From booming wildlife populations to big-time bass fishing, roaring whitewater to retail reshaping, it was a busy year for Virginia's sportsmen. Here's a look at the biggest stories.
Bassmaster Elites come to lake
For the second time in three years, the Bassmaster Elite Series made a stop at Smith Mountain Lake.
As they had for the first Blue Ridge Brawl in June 2007, fans of pro bass fishing turned out in big numbers to watch the action on the water and at the weigh-ins at Parkway Marina.
Kevin VanDam, the most successful angler in the history of BASS, took the lead on the second day and went on to win with a four-day catch totaling 61 pounds, 13 ounces.
The tournament featured a number of subplots.
One was the added stress the rough economy was placing on anglers and tournament organizers. As sponsors pulled back on spending, many anglers struggled to finance their seasons. Some touring pros had to bag their campaigns before they even started, and a few others dropped out during the year.
BASS trimmed the Elite Series to cut its expenses and anglers' travel costs, but the 2009 and 2010 stops at Smith Mountain Lake survived the cuts.
A new marshals program that put nonfishing observers in pros boats was generally popular, but some amateurs missed the co-angler category.
A few of those fishermen in the Smith Mountain Lake area created a tournament called Beat the Elites. The event generated a lot of publicity, much of it bad. The Beat the Elites tournament attracted so few registrants that organizers basically revamped the event into just a couple of days of fishing among friends.
Big game boom continues
The Department of Game and Inland Fisheries won't announce total kills from this fall's big game hunting seasons for a couple of months. But it seems certain that deer and bear hunters will have had another banner year.
At last look, electronic checking totals for deer hunters were tracking about 5 percent ahead of the running tally in 2008, when the kill set a record at nearly 254,000.
Because all bears must be checked in person, it's difficult to track kill trends during the season.
But, with more archery and muzzleloader hunting having been added this year as the DGIF tries to stabilize and reduce bear populations, it would be surprising if hunters don't break last year's record kill of 2,204.
Bear license a contentious issue
This was a year for the DGIF to overhaul its hunting regulations, and the proposal that generated the most attention was one to establish remove the bear tag from Virginia's big game license and establish a separate bear tag at a cost of $25 for residents.
Most proposals come from the DGIF staff, but the bear license proposal was brought forth by hunters who pursue bears with hounds.
They said a separate license such as those in place in some neighboring states could generate $300,000 or more in additional revenue for the DGIF. Some said that bears were too valuable to be taken by deer hunters who just luck upon one in the woods.
The DGIF's board gave the proposal the initial go-ahead so they could gauge public opinion on the topic, and public opinion they got.
Houndsmen defended the proposal while many deer hunters fought against the license, saying it wasn't fair to charge them for a tag that a small percentage get a chance to fill.
With the DGIF looking to increase the bear kill in many areas, the timing was not ideal for the proposal and it was unanimously defeated.
Boom times for firearms sales
Gun sales skyrocketed as the presidential election approached in late 2008, fueled by concerns that having a Democrat in the White House would set the stage for a wave of gun control laws.
Though no significant gun control proposals have came out of Washington, the boom continued in 2009.
Sales of ammunition and reloading supplies also spiked, with military demand a contributing factor.
Firearms sales also helped bring in extra money to state fish and wildlife agencies that benefit from money collected through the Pittman-Robertson Act, which diverts to the agencies a portion of tax revenue on sporting arms and ammunition.
Rocky year for retail
When Sportsman's Warehouse opened in Roanoke in the fall of 2007, outdoorsmen rejoiced.
The region finally had its first outdoors megastore, with 40,000 square feet of fishing, hunting and camping gear.
The opening of a Gander Mountain store a few miles away just a few months later gave the region's shoppers yet more options.
But timing was hardly ideal, with the arrival of the stores coinciding with the arrival of the worst recession in decades.
Early this year the Sportsman's Warehouse announced it was going into bankruptcy and would be closing many of its stores, including the one in Roanoke.
The store closed for good in late spring.
Whitewater rush and tragedies
After several dry years, the region's canoeists and kayakers had plenty of water in 2009.
The paddling bonanza had a downside as three paddlers died in accidents on local rivers.
In March, a kayaker drowned in the Maury River while trying to negotiate the difficult Devil's Kitchen section of Goshen Pass.
Two paddlers died on the Blackwater River in Franklin county in separate incidents in June and July, after becoming trapped caught in a hydraulic below a low-head dam, which has since been modified to eliminate the hydraulic.
A fat cat and honkin' hybrid
When Danny Ayers of Glasgow went fishing on the James River for blue catfish with friend Tim Wilson, he was hoping to boat his first 30-pound catfish.
He got one more than three times that big.
On May 20 the two men teamed up to boat a 102-pound blue cat, the first registered freshwater fish in Virginia to top the triple-digit mark.
The catch was a total team effort with both men helping boat the fish. Virginia freshwater fishing records can be assigned to only one person, so Wilson, who lives in Natural Bridge Station, got the official credit.
After the fish was weighed and verified, it was released back into the James.
Just a week prior to the catfish catch, Robbie Rakes was casting a plug in the New River when he hooked into a 13-pound hybrid striped bass that set a record for that species.
Trout come to the classroom
Thanks to volunteer efforts and a strong fundraising campaign, middle school students in the Roanoke Valley are connecting with trout and trout habitat.
During the 2008/2009 school year, three schools participated in Trout Unlimited's Trout in the Classroom program. Starting with eggs from a DGIF trout hatchery, students raised brook trout fingerlings in aquariums. The trout were living props for important lessons about biology, the environment and water quality.
In the spring the students traveled to a local trout stream to release the fish. Program coordinators say releasing the fish into the wild helps give students a connection with the water and fosters a sense of ownership that can help them become more involved in environmental stewardship.
Buoyed by the success of the pilot program, Trout in the Classroom was expanded to more than a dozen more Roanoke Valley schools this fall.
