There are some bigger ones out there...

The Raleigh News and Observer reminds us that there are some striper in the Roanoke River that are much bigger than the ones I caught on this year's trip. Much bigger... A Raleigh man recently landed a 42.9 pounder on 17 pound tippet.

Thomas said that big stripers are a relatively new phenomenon on the river, and he captured the first 40-pounder during a sampling trip to collect data in 2002.
Only 10 stripers (also called rockfish) have broken the 40-pound barrier this year -- out of more than 5,000 his crew has sampled.

The fish are travelers, too. He said that he has had tags from Roanoke River stripers returned from as far away as Long Island, N.Y.

The above statement being one of which we have seen recent pictorial evidence.

2008 Roanoke River Striper Trip

This past weekend was spent with friends Ron and Deanna who invited me along on a trip to fish the Roanoke River near Williamston, North Carolina during the early part of the striper run. We hit the water with our running lights on before daylight on Friday morning in Deanna's Carolina Skiff the "Miss Belle."

Conditions were not what one would call ideal for trying to catch river striper on a fly rod but I was determined to try. The water was very high and stained. It quickly became evident that my intermediate sinking line was not going to be enough to get my fly into the strike zone so I added a large sinker to my leader and commenced chucking and ducking (literally). Eventually I managed to hook up with and land a rather small rockfish. The nine weight fly rod I was swinging turned out to be a bit optimistic when it came to the size of my catch but I was able to land and release my catch quickly.

Ron and Deanna and I caught a few more striper during the rest of the trip but Deanna was the only one in our group to get a slot fish. It came in just under 22 inches. An interesting note was the many big bowfin or blackfish as the locals call them. We caught several of the hard fighting toothy fish. The prehistoric looking fish were rolling on the top of the water anywhere creeks flowed into the river. Try as I might I couldn't get one to take a fly.

Thanks to Ron and Deanna for a day on the water. They were excellent hosts and taught me a lot about one of their favorite places to fish.

Friends with Boats Weekend!

Today is a travel day for the staff of FlyFishMagazine.com. We are heading out for our yearly celebration of "friends with boats" weekend. We all know that the only thing better than owning your own boat is having a friend who owns one and doesn't mind ferrying your sorry hindquarters around.

This year we will be joining Ron "long arm of the law" Barnes, for what we hope will be a visit to the Roanoke River striper run. Initial reports are good and the weather is looking to be excellent. This will be my first trip out with the new 9 wt rod (wishful thinking) so I am looking forward to casting into water and not lawn.

This will also be my first shot rockfish in a river setting. I think that my efforts might be hampered by the fact that I only have an intermediate sinking line. The experts all indicate that if the water is up a fast sinking line is needed in order to get to the bottom as quickly as possible. I just couldn't quite make it to the store for a new line so I intend to improvise my way around this by using some nifty crimp on bullet weights. I am hoping that these will sit close enough to the fly to avoid the usual problems with the chuck and duck but still not impact their rockfish appeal. I'll let you know how these work. With any luck the flows will be down and then 1.5 ft per second sink rate on my line will be enough to put me in the strike zone and on fish.

Gone like a Civil War Solider Bang Bang...

The final Roanoke River Striper report is up on the NC Wildlife Resources website. They agree with our pal Ron that this year's run wasn't its best.

Anglers interested in hitting the river for one last cast may hook a straggler or two, but for most part, the stripers quickly hightailed it back to the Atlantic Ocean after several days of scorching hot weather and water temperatures exceeding 70 degrees Fahrenheit over the holiday weekend.

While it wasn’t one of the best years on record, it certainly wasn’t one of the worst either. During weekly samples between April 16 and May 29, Commission biologists and Division of Marine Fisheries personnel tagged close to 3,000 striped bass, with many striped bass ranging in size from 18 to 35 inches and some exceeding 40 inches.

PS. We just found out that Today is Ron "Stripermaster" Barnes' Birthday. We hope he gets a chance to go fishing today!

Roanoke River Striper Report

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Comission has posted a fishing report about the striper run on the Roanoke River.

"Bobby Colston, owner of Colston's Tackle Box on Highway 48 south of Gaston, heard several reports of anglers catching decent numbers of stripers around Weldon. Colston said anglers were having the most luck fishing bucktails—either white or chartreuse—and sassy shad jigs. One fisherman fishing above the Hwy. 48 bridge caught and released six small stripers using a bucktail lure. “The stripers aren’t running strong just yet, but they’re coming,” Colston said."

Officer Ron Barnes of the NC DMV caught this one during the Roanoke River run last year.