Sunday, March 14, 2010
South Holston top bass lake in area
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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A number-filled report detailing biologists' findings from sampling Virginia's largemouth bass lakes showed up not long ago in my e-mail, along with a note from Gary Martel.
"I know how much you enjoy getting cerebral with data," wrote Martel, chief of the Fisheries Division of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "So I figured you would enjoy this."
Martel knows me well.
My favorite way to get in touch with Virginia's fishing and hunting is to get out there and personally sample it.
But I also really love digging into numbers looking for trends, patterns and unusual nuggets.
The largemouth info was pretty mild, just a five-page document with tables ranking largemouth lakes based on CPUE-P and RSD-P.
That's catch per unit effort of preferred fish and relative stock density of preferred fish, by the way.
Based on that information, the top-ranked lake in the Southwest Region is South Holston Reservoir, where the CPUE-P and RSD-P recorded by biologists using electroshocking gear were both tops in the region.
Claytor Lake came in sixth, with a catch per unit effort of 10, which was half the rate at South Holston. But the RSD-P was 38, second best in the entire region.
The takeaway?
The bass population at Claytor isn't great, but when you do catch a fish there's a better chance it's going to be a good one.
In Region II, the leader isn't too surprising. It's Briery Creek Lake, the little game department-owned reservoir near Farmville that traditionally leads the state in trophy bass production despite its size.
The catch rate at Briery Creek was 52.6, far and away the leader in the region.
Interestingly, the density of preferred fish wasn't off the charts. Four lakes, including Smith Mountain, were better.
Overall, Smith Mountain was seventh among the 25 ranked lakes in the region. So, it's solid, something its fans know well.
Anglers might be surprised by a couple of the lakes that ranked ahead of Smith Mountain.
Little Fairystone Lake was ranked fourth, just ahead of Carvins Cove.
Yes, Carvins Cove.
Now you know why some Carvins Cove junkies didn't exactly welcome news that the DGIF was being invited back to take a look at the 600-acre water supply reservoir.
The bass fishing is already excellent and these guys don't want it messed with. (Not that it's going to happen.)
These data aren't foolproof, of course.
The timing of the sampling can alter the results.
For example, if it's prime spawning season on a lake, the shallows could be packed with largemouths so the catch rate will be high.
On the other hand, hitting a lake between spawning pushes could move numbers the other way.
Still, these data are likely more reliable than another bunch of numbers that can help us get a feel for freshwater fishing opportunities in the state.
Each year the DGIF processes some 5,000 applications for awards under its Virginia Angler Recognition Program.
The awards system is hardly exact science.
Some official weigh stations have certified scales, but others don't. And applications for length citations -- meant for released fish, though some of those fish don't get released -- just require a signature from a witness, who can be your fishing buddy.
Plus, there's the $4 application fee that keeps some anglers from submitting applications.
The fee had to be put in place because customers of trout fee fisheries, where reaching into your wallet is the key technique for catching a citation-sized fish, were breaking the program's budget.
Some of those folks are still applying for citations, which skews the trout fishing numbers.
But even if you work some margin of error into the information you can see some clear trends.
Not that we need proof that the New River is the state's best smallmouth fishery, but that's what we get with its 227 smallmouth citations, by far the most of any water in the state.
There are enough smallmouth awards that we can feel fairly confident about seasonal trends, too.
For example, clearly March and April offer the best chance to land a 5-pound-plus fish. Fish that top that weight standard become rare after the spawn.
However, the fishing never really slows down for 20-inch-plus smallies, which were had in good numbers right on through the summer. Of course, increased fishing pressure probably had something to do with that.
The citation information also provides a look at the variety available at some of our favorite local spots.
Take Claytor Lake, for example. It hardly set the world on fire with 109 total citations. Yet those awards spanned 12 species, from carp to yellow perch. That's pretty cool.
Smith Mountain Lake's 148 citations also were for 12 species, the leader being striped bass with 42 awards.
The lake produced a couple of interesting catches, including a single muskie, and a 5-pound, 4-ounce fish caught on June 20 by Lane Thomasson.
The latter fish is an example of one of those unique nuggets. It was a rainbow trout that somehow ended up in a bass lake.
