Roanoke River NC Stripers

[gottaflylee]

I'm going to keep this thread open for the next couple of weeks as I'm on the Roanoke River fishing the tail race for the Striper run at Roanoke Rapides NC. I'll try to keep you all updated with pictures, water flows, and water quality. As of now water flow is at 9,000 cfm but with a few inches of rain we'll see if this holds. Water level is up for the river and quality went down today with the rain as muddy water run off from today's rain flowed into the river. The jig bite was on fire yesterday morning as wellas a good fly bite and the bait bite produced 5 nice fish in the keeper slot (18 to 22") for us also had 1 fish almost over the 27" mark. Fish are on the small size for this time of yeas but we are seeing a small increase as time goes on. Ended the day with only 76 fish yesterday and should see this increase soon as the weather settled down. Here are a couple of average fish from yesterday....I'm tired and going to bed.





Hope to have more pictures tomorrow if I can pull the camera out in the rain tomorrow

[EMTAE]

Have you been up to the rocks?I was hopeing to get up there soon.Catch-em up.

[WAHOONBOX]

LEE I FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR PARTY YESTERDAY.....THE HORROR! ONLY 76 STRIPERS AND ON THE FLY AS WELL.....THAT IS A HORRIBLE DAY!!!

76....................GEEZUS H.........I GUESS YOU FELT COMPELLED NOT TO CHARGE FOR SUCH A SLOPPY OUTTING

IS THIS BROKEN PATTERN OF LATERAL DOTS TRUE TO FORM ON ALL STRIPERS? ANY CHANCE OF SOME HYBRID IN THIS ONE? (BODIE BASS)

[BTH284]

Nice work Lee. Always fun to put in the Roanoke this time of year and get on a striper or 30. Heard any gobbling yet down by the power lines? If you get a chance can you video the "action" at the Weldon boat ramp. These guys around here would get a kick out of it. It makes the ramps on our coast look like a well rehearsed dance.

[SeaBiscuit]

Glad your Roanoke season is off to a great start captain Lee. even if there were no fish there that upper stretch of river is a beautiful place.

BTH that Halifax county is full of them gobbling birds and some pretty country to hunt them in!

Biscuit

[gottaflylee]

After a bunch of rain and some muddy water, we hit the river at crack of 6:30 am and headed down the river in a drizzle of rain for our first only for me to find that I had another newbie on the boat that had never caught a Striper before. We started on the jig before switching to bait and made a long drift with no luck before moving up to "Little River". First cast after I set the anchor, and the newbie pops his cherry with a nice schoolie fish on the jig.





After catching a few there we move back to the main river to find the shock boat getting ready to capture some Stripers to do the tagging thing. As he cranks the generator up and hits the switch, fish start floating to the top in large numbers, 20 to 30 per 15 to 30 second bursts of shock, gently lifted into the big tank on their boat to be transferred to the tag boat after 50 or so fish are captured. Needless to say that it did not take long to fill their tank. After watching for a while its time for us to head down the river to do some more drifting with live bait only to find that the bite is on and we are catching them at a steady clip, Dave and his friend on live bait and me on the jig. Not many keepers but lots of 17 & 3/4" fish. By lunch time we caught and released about 50 fish for the morning and it was time to call it a day.

As I said the other day the river is running about 9,000 cfm, the plan as of now is that they are going to drop it to 7,000 cfm and hold it there. I was amazed at how much the river had cleared up by lunch time today. By tomorrow, it should be back to normal as to clarity. Tomorrow is my day off the take care of boat, trailer and truck things (I'm sure that I can also fins a tackle store to wonder around in) but I will try to have you a river report of some kind...guess that means I may have to pull out the fly rod for a little while...

one of the nice keeper fish from this morning...

[gottaflylee]

Have you been up to the rocks?I was hopeing to get up there soon.Catch-em up.

Emtae, the rocks I think that you are talking about are under water for the most part as now the river is about 9,000cfm but they are getting ready to drop it...you can get up to the gap but "Redbird" is a little hary to get through.

LEE I FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR PARTY YESTERDAY.....THE HORROR! ONLY 76 STRIPERS AND ON THE FLY AS WELL.....THAT IS A HORRIBLE DAY!!!

76....................GEEZUS H.........I GUESS YOU FELT COMPELLED NOT TO CHARGE FOR SUCH A SLOPPY OUTTING

IS THIS BROKEN PATTERN OF LATERAL DOTS TRUE TO FORM ON ALL STRIPERS? ANY CHANCE OF SOME HYBRID IN THIS ONE? (BODIE BASS)

Box, you sure got a good eye... That fish is not a hybird, but the broken stripes are an indication of hybird fish. That fish was a female and full of eggs, she was very fat. As with finger prints each fish is diffrent. If we capture a hybird this year I will post a ppicture so you can see the diffrence....

Nice work Lee. Always fun to put in the Roanoke this time of year and get on a striper or 30. Heard any gobbling yet down by the power lines? If you get a chance can you video the "action" at the Weldon boat ramp. These guys around here would get a kick out of it. It makes the ramps on our coast look like a well rehearsed dance.

Not gobbling much at all this year but we did have one almost fly into the boat 2 days ago. Had I not been in the back of the boat, I could have hooked it with the rod it was so close. Today I heard a single shot not far from us...one down... Today the hooty Owles were sounding off but no Trukerys were responding even to the train whisles...

[weekender]

thanks for keeping us posted on the stripers/river, good stuff

[Dave Sikorski]

Great reports Lee. Keep them coming. I'll be driving through on Wed. night on my way to Morehead.

Not sure what time just yet but if it's at a decent hour let's do dinner.

-D

[EMTAE]

Lee nice talking to ya and thanks for the Info about the blue backs.Hope to get up there on sunday ill be in touch.