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.