Cast and Blast

Gobblers and stripers highlight May along the Roanoke River.

The dew was heavy enough to wet your pantlegs, but there was an upside; it made a quiet sneak through the woods much easier — and quiet was required to get close to a roosted gobbler at daylight.

With sign language and muted whispers, Gil Cutchin of Northampton County’s Occoneechee Lodge directed a hunter to sit at the edge of a swamp where they’d roosted a gobbler 10 hours earlier, and he signaled the general place he expected the turkey to appear.

He placed a Harry Williams hen decoy about 15 yards away in an open spot in the mature woodlot, emphasized the need for being quiet, getting comfortable and being able to sit motionless for quite a while.

The excitement was high, knowing a turkey was roosting nearby, and the wait for first light seemed like an eternity. Finally, as some of the ghosts in the woods were morphing back into stumps and bushes, it grew light enough for Cutchin.

He had barely finished his first call when a gobble boomed back from the edge of the swamp. The turkey sounded hot and might come in quickly, but it was really close and also might see any movement. Rock-solid still was the order of the day.

A few minutes later, the turkey gobbled again, still in the tree. Cutchin answered with a sweet “come-hither” purr, but the tom held steady and wouldn’t move. The exchange continued for the next half-hour; while he sounded hot, the gobbler obviously wanted to see the hen before leaving his tree.

Under his breath, Cutchin whispered, “This turkey has been hunted before, and he’s playing it safe. He wants to see the hen before committing to it.”

With the budding turkey courtship nearing the 1-hour mark, Cutchin put a little more excitement into his call — and then went quiet. The gobbler became more vocal, sounding more animated with the hen not answering. Finally, 70 minutes into the hunt, the turkey gobbled from the ground, and Cutchin excitedly whispered to get ready. It appeared playing “hard to get’ was the right ploy for this wise old bird.

Within a minute, the turkey’s head popped up from behind a blowdown the hunters hadn’t noticed in the dark. It was in shotgun range — especially with Cutchin’s hunter shouldering a 10-gauge — but only the head was visible and the target was really small at the edge of range. Suddenly, the turkey’s head changed color as his stare focused on the decoy. Obviously excited, he began moving down the laydown, peeking over it every few feet. When the turkey disappeared behind the root ball, the hunter shifted slightly to be ready when the turkey emerged.

Just as the gobbler cleared the root ball, it paused and stretched its neck to get a good look at the decoy. When it did, no prompting from Cutchin was needed. The shotgun roared, and the turkey collapsed in a heap without even a flutter. Still, Cutchin leaped up and ran over to it to be sure.

“I’ve seen several occasions when ‘dead’ turkeys have jumped up and run off, and we’ve worked too hard for this one,” he said. “He tested our patience, but you held still, and he didn’t spot us. He had been sitting in a tree right over there and looking hard for the hen he was hearing. Our decoy must have been behind a tree, and he couldn’t see it. Thankfully, no other hens were in this little section of woods.”

Yep, this gobbler had been outsmarted. The fake Jezebel and Cutchin’s skilled calling had lured it within yards of where he thought it would come. A quick measurement of the 10½-inch beard and 1¼-inch spurs, and Cutchin decided it was a healthy, 3-year-old bird.

Back to the lodge they headed, grinning widely. Other hunters had scored, and a big country breakfast was consumed in celebration. This demanded a nap, after which the hunters became fishermen and decided to sample the excellent striped bass — “rockfish” — fishing on the Roanoke River.

Occoneechee Lodge has a private launching ramp on the Roanoke, a few miles downriver from Weldon, the center of spring rockfish action. Dan Williams, who has a private dock several hundred yards downstream from the city ramp in Weldon, has an excellent reputation for catching stripers, and Cutchin schedules most of the lodge’s fishing or cast-and-blast outings with him.

Williams often drifts, like the majority of fishermen on the river, but this afternoon, he chose to motor downriver into the heart of the action and tie to an overhanging tree on the north bank. The fish had bit on his morning charter that day, and with the water level in the river remaining stead, he headed back to the same location.

“We caught fish well here this morning,” Williams said. “There is a little ledge just off the bank, and when the river is this high, the rock run along it. Cast or drop your baits off the left side of the boat and you should be about right.”

The location proved to be a good choice. With Carolina rigs baited with the local “shad” and cast the baits downstream, behind Williams’ big aluminum johnboat, it only took a few minutes before Cutchins’ cry of “Got one on!” rang out, and a fishing rod bent deeply.

Cutchin reeled in the fish, Williams pronounced it a keeper as he reached for it with the net. Sure enough, the fish made 20 inches on the ruler, and it went into a cooler for a fish fry at the lodge later in the week. As Cutchin slipped a new bait on the hook, Williams reared back and set the hook on another fish.

The action continued, with the fishermen catching a mixture of short and barely legal fish. The short fish and a few barely legal ones were released immediately until they were within one fish of filling their limit of 19- to 21-inch fish. The fish in the cooler all fit into that size range, but everyone wanted to catch a large one.

Regulations on the Roanoke River allow fishermen to keep two stripers per day, with an 18-inch size minimum, a 22- to 27-inch no-possession slot, and only one fish longer than 27 inches per day. Williams decided to drift for a while to see if that would produce a larger fish.

“We caught a couple this morning, and I’d like y’all to catch one too,” he said. “We’ll ease up a ways and drift across a couple of spots and see what we do. When you bait up next, be sure to get as large a bait as you can find.”

The drift produced lots of fish, but all were the same size as the fish in the cooler. After a while, a nice, legal-but-not-large fish, came aboard, and Williams suggested keeping it to fill the limit.

The land around the Roanoke River is a known hunting hotspot, with Halifax and Northampton counties holding the top two spots for total deer and turkeys killed in recent seasons. Being able to put a turkey hunt together with a trip during the annual spring spawning run of the rockfish makes for as memorable a day as a sportsman could imagine.

Except, of course, for the good eating that followed.