Here’s to another great striped bass season on the Roanoke River. This will be the last report of the 2010 striped bass season on the Roanoke River.

On Tuesday, biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission and the Division of Marine Fisheries collected 443 striped bass while electrofishing at Weldon for the final striped bass spawning stock assessment collection of the 2010 season.

According to Jeremy McCargo, fisheries biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, male stripers made up the majority of the fish still in the river and most fish were concentrated near the boat ramp. Striped bass spawning activity has been going strong for the last few weeks, and water temperatures exceeded the preferred spawning threshold during last week’s warm weather. Thus, the striped bass spawning season is drawing to an end.

The fishing season is slowing down, too, and fishing pressure has been pretty light during the past week. In fact, Frank McBride, creel clerk for the Commission, only saw four boats fishing at Weldon on Tuesday. The boats were anchored or drifting in the swift waters near the rocks by the boat ramp. McBride noted that the anglers were catching plenty of stripers as he watched from his post on the boat ramp.

McCargo reminds Weldon-bound anglers that the water levels are much lower now than they were earlier in the season and boaters who want to catch the last stripers of the season need to be careful of submerged rocks and swift currents.

Over the course of the 2010 striped bass sampling season, Commission and Division of Marine Fisheries biological staff collected about 4,000 striped bass and tagged about 3,200 of them. The spawning stock information gathered from sampling striped bass at Weldon is essential for managing the Roanoke River and Albemarle Sound striped bass fisheries.

Many thanks go out to the following people for their hard work during the 2010 striped bass sampling and creel survey on the Roanoke River, including Chad Thomas, Jeremy McCargo, Kirk Rundle, Bill Collart, Bennett Wynne, and Kevin Dockendorf from N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. Thanks go out as well to Charlton Godwin, Sara Winslow, Jacob Boyd, Chandler Sawyer, Will Creef, Dean Day, Kelly Smith, Cynthia Kroswek, Jenny Lippincott, Holly White, Ben Goforth and Lynn Henry from N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries.

We are especially grateful to Frank McBride and Terry Boyce 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, R. Jack, J. Strider, S. Reinhart and P. Browne.

Special thanks go out to Jeremy McCargo and Kevin Dockendorf, Commission fisheries biologists, 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

See you next spring.

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