Commission biologist Jeremy McCargo holds up a striped bass weighing approximately 30 lbs.
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Weekly Fishing Report for the Roanoke River, May 15
Striped bass fishing on the Roanoke River continues this week, with much the same activity as in previous weeks — the fish are in the river and anglers are catching decent numbers but they’re fishing hard for them and the majority of the fish are running on the small side (15-18 inches). Frank McBride, a creel clerk for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, said that catch-and-release fishing is pretty good with most fishermen catching between 50 and 80 fish each. About 50 percent were fishing with live bait, although Bobby Colston saw some “fantastic fishing” on Monday afternoon with anglers throwing swimbait lures. The fishing really picked up as the afternoon went on with the best fishing happening from 6:30 p.m. to dark. Colston went back out on Tuesday afternoon and the fishing was “fair.” He and three others caught about 30 fish on flukes, never really getting into a good bite, although they did start fishing with swimbaits later on and caught seven or eight fish. They drifted and cast around the bank but didn’t find a concentration of fish anywhere. Most of the fish they caught were in the 2-to 3-pound range. Commission biologists sampling the river on Monday collected about 960 stripers, with Division of Marine Fisheries staff tagging about 700 of them. The majority of the stripers were collected between Little River and the Big Rock. With fewer striped bass collected than the previous week and water temperatures remaining in the optimal spawning range, the 2008 striper bass season on the Roanoke continues to wind down.
“We found many size classes of striped bass this week including greater numbers of striped bass in the protected slot, which is 22 to 27 inches, that began to show up in larger numbers last week,” said Kevin Dockendorf, Commission biologist. Please remember to use single barbless hooks or lures with a single barbless hook when fishing near Weldon to reduce hooking mortality on striped bass. The Commission also 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. Click here for additional information on striped bass fishing on the Roanoke River.
River Conditions Check current river conditions at Roanoke Rapids Check current river conditions at Williamston Additional Water Quality Information
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