A Frankfort man’s 52-pound, I-64 striper

July 14, 2009 by admin

By Carleton L. West
A fly fishing friend in Virginia Beach pestered me for some time to take a crack at striped bass, one of America’s great sport fishes. We’d met in 2002 on New Mexico’s San Juan River where big rainbows and browns thrived not far from the duplex cabin we rented near the little town of Navajo.
Owen Pepper first got my attention with his tales of a guide on Arkansas’s White River by the name of Dave Lewis. I’ve lost track now of all my trips there for ho-hum 60-70 daily trout outings Lewis guided on the fabled Ozarks tailwater. Like a stockbroker with a practiced eye for a hot deal, Pepper knows the path to fish. He’s worth listening to.
So he kept up his campaign with e-mails and phone calls. Attached to the electronic messages were color photos of Pepper and his striped bass catches. He escalated a year ago or so when he bought a boat, a 19-footer, seaworthy, with 100 plus horses and a center console. But it was a late night phone call that produced the clincher when I casually asked where he was hooking all these stripers. Under the Chesapeake Bay bridges – at night. Which bridges specifically? The Interstate 64 bridges.

Whoa. The thought that the interstate that runs a few miles from my Frankfort home could lead not only to a new adventure – fly fishing is challenging enough in daylight – but also a “honey hole” for a prized gamefish was compelling. And I-64’s eastern terminus is Chesapeake Bay and Virginia Beach – precisely at Atlantic Avenue smack across from a Holiday Inn fronting the ocean. (Technically, it’s I-264 but that’s quibbling.)
Striper nirvana for Christmas beckoned. For background, they’re rich in history, one of the icons of recreational and commercial fishing. In colonial times, their sale was taxed to support public schools. It’s a boom and bust fishery. Their numbers fluctuate with pressure from commercial and casual fishing, pollution and government regulation, among other factors.
Stripers took on a whole new dimension nearly a half century ago when biologists discovered they could not only survive in fresh water, but thrive. Thus today, they’re worth millions to Kentucky’s Lake Cumberland economy because that fishery has become one of the nation’s better freshwater destinations for stripers – 40-pounders are not uncommon. All it took was one nationally-aired TV program of the Cumberland stripers and it became Kentucky’s hottest fish.
But long before that, stripers were providing one of nature’s most spectacular scenes. That’s the fall migration of stripers and other species from Maine south down the Atlantic coast to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
It’s one of the world’s greatest wildlife migrations and it’s addicted millions of fishers in boats and with surf rods fascinated by stripers when they go on a feeding frenzy. The water literally boils as pods of stripers chase and trap schools of baitfish. They cut them to ribbons with viscous, slashing strikes. The striper feeding mass is sometimes so thick that the quality of a good fly is one made of materials that will slide easily off their backs and into the water where it can do some good.
It’s called a “blitz.” To find blitzing stripers, fishers look for birds circling to prey on the baitfish. Some enterprising entrepreneur could probably sell tickets to tourists to witness the whole scene. It’s that spectacular.
There was no blitz on the Chesapeake the night Pepper took me out to weave among the bridge pilings. The bay stripers are called “schoolies” and they hang around mostly year around as a sort of a side show to the main event. But there they were, under the bridges, at night, attracted to the baitfish which were attracted by the bridge lights. It’s the food chain thing.
Fly fishing is traditionally known as a gentle, serene pastime with cool mountain streams murmuring with flowing water. That was not at hand here. It lacked every element of serenity. The boat rocked and bounced to choppy waves and strong tidal currents. It was cold, three-layer clothing cold.
Pristine? Murmuring? Exhaust-belching heavy trucks roared a few feet overhead. Tires whined and slapped the pavement. Horns blared from motorists rushing in Christmas-shopping traffic.
We cast our 6, 7 and 8 weights tapered to 15-pound fluorocarbon sidearm because of the low ceiling. The key was keeping in sight the fly – in this case heavy Clousers. If you don’t know where your fly is hitting the water in relation to the stripers, you’re out of luck. For practice, try throwing something lead-eyed 30 feet at a tea cup. At night. The other key is to keeping the boat in position around the bridge pilings for the casting, no easy task given the wind, cold, tidal current and poor visibility. Pepper’s better at the helm than he thinks.
So it was with the I-64 stripers. I caught more than I could count in the 18 to 21 inch range (they must be 18 to keep There’s no better testimony to a good time on the water with a fly rod than losing track of the numbers. They say the best time to go fishing is when you can because you never know when or where you’ll find it good. That made Christmas in the Chesapeake with its bridge stripers all the sweeter.

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