Roanoke River Fishing Report

Roanoke River Fishing Report (5/28/2009)
Last Report of the 2009 Striped Bass Season on the Roanoke River

Kevin Dockendorf, fisheries biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, holds up one of the bigger striped bass collected during the 2009 striped bass sampling season.

On Tuesday, biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and the Division of Marine Fisheries completed their last spawning stock assessment of the season. They collected about 90 striped bass while electrofishing at Weldon for the final collection of the 2009 season.

Male and female striped bass ranged from 14 to 24 inches with no large striped bass collected. This catch is not surprising with water temperatures at 71 degrees and quickly warming. As the summer approaches, the few remaining stripers will soon be gone.

Over the course of the 2009 striped bass sampling season, Commission and Division of Marine Fisheries biological staff collected about 4,500 striped bass and tagged about 3,300 of them.

Many thanks go out to the following people for their hard work during the 2009 striped bass sampling and creel survey on the Roanoke River, including Chad Thomas, Jeremy McCargo, Kirk Rundle, Bennett Wynne, Pete Kornegay and Kevin Dockendorf from N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and Wildlife Enforcement Officers D. Durham and S. Reinhart. Thanks go out as well to Charlton Godwin, Justin Welker, Jacob Boyd, Chandler Sawyer, Will Creef, Jenny Lippincott and Wes Collett from N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.

We are grateful to Frank and Donna McBride for interviewing anglers during the striped bass creel survey, and we appreciate the anglers providing us with valuable striped bass information.

We also thank our wildlife enforcement officers for their assistance throughout the Roanoke River striped bass season, especially J. Rivenbark, B. Holland, T. Hardy, J. Reams, J. Hale, C. Hatcher, B. Stoop, M. Cagle, B. White, D. Cable, T. Wadsworth, R. Jack and J. Strider.

A special thanks goes out to Kevin Dockendorf, Commission fisheries biologist, Bobby Colston, owner of Colston’s Tackle Box on Hwy. 48 south of Gaston and Ricky Mobley from the Roanoke Sportsman at 749 River Road in Williamston. Without their weekly input, these reports could not have been written.
These are the folks who work, fish and live in the area and who graciously agreed to take time out of their busy schedules to provide Weldon-bound anglers with timely accounts of the fishing activity along the river.

For more information on the Division of Marine Fisheries Striped Bass tagging program, please visit http://www.ncfisheries.net/content/strbass/strbasstaginfo.html

Striped Bass Season and Regulation Information

The entire Roanoke River Management Area is closed to striped bass harvest effective April 30.

While catch and release fishing, the Commission encourages striped bass anglers to use small, non-offset circle hooks, preferably ones with the least amount of distance between the hook point and shank.

Studies show that striped bass caught on small, barbless circle hooks are usually hooked in the jaw, which means they have a much greater chance of survival after being released than fish hooked in the throat or gut.

Keep in mind that whether you use circle hooks or regular "J" hooks, regulations only permit the use of a single barbless hook in Roanoke River upstream of the U.S. Highway 258 bridge each year from April 1 through June 30.