Made my annual run to the Roanoke to try for stripers last Friday. Been reading the reports and they are right - the fish are in, but they were also right in saying that the big ones have not arrived yet.
This being the last week for keeping fish you can imagine everyone and his brother was there. I called a buddy who was also going and he was at the ramp at about 8:30am waiting for 27 other boats to launch ahead of him. Things must have gone fairly smooth because when we arrived about 45 minutes later we were next in line. We motored down to the big rock and started drifting big minnows and dodging at least a hundred boats doing the same. My fishing partner hooked up almost immediately and then proceeded to do it two more times in a row while I bit my lower lip and tried to smile.
He finally told me he was just lowering it to the bottom and letting it bump along as we drifted. I had been casting to the rear and dragging it along. As soon as I smartened up I had my first fish.
Most of our fish were just shy of the 18 inch mark where you can keep them (Limit of 2 with a slot of 18-22 inches or above 27 inches). It really didn't matter because there were enough of them to keep our rods bent most of the day.
In my opinion any fish that spends some of it's life in the ocean is going to be a powerful fish. These small but feisty stripers lived up to that theory.
We started with 6 dozen minnows and went through all of them by 3pm. All fish were caught using circle hooks which connect on the edge of the mouth making for easy removal and release without very much stress to the fish. Once the minnows were about gone I tied on a 3 inch Sassy Shad and caught a few more.
We probably boated 50-60 fish. Not a banner day, but not bad either. I kept in touch with my buddy via cell phone. He and another fishing friend were in a wide flat bottomed Jon boat and the other fellow knew the river and how to get above the Weldon rocks without knocking his motors lower unit out of whack. They reported exceptional fishing above the rocks. Very few boats up there and the fish were also larger. To add icing on the cake, they were using flyrods and estimated they caught and released about 100 fish.
I expect the best is yet to come. Once the "catch & keep" season ends on April 30th the crowds will thin out and the larger females will arrive to do their thing. The Roanoke River striper fishery may never recover to the point that "old timers" talk about but it has come a long way since the NCWRC got serious about enforcing recovery related rules