Veggie Soup

Grass means bass for fishermen at Roanoke Rapids Lake

Fishermen who frequently visit Roanoke Rapids Lake have had to adjust the way they fish over the past 10 or 15 years.

Like Tuckertown Lake in the Piedmont, Roanoke Rapids Lake along the North Carolina-Virginia border has become infested with aquatic vegetation — hydrilla in this case — and when the grass took over, all fishing bets were off.

Anglers who loved to fish crankbaits were the most affected by the greenery since the veggie soup rendered their plugs and treble hooks useless.

No one knows this better than guide Tim Biesecker, who inherited his love for crankbait fishing from his father, the late Homer Biesecker of Lexington. Years ago, Homer Biesecker took a youngster named David Wright under his wing, and Wright became one of the tremendous crankbait fishermen produced by Lexington and nearby High Rock Lake. Biesecker was the first High Rock regular to discover the effectiveness of the chartreuse/green color pattern, and it became so synonomous with his name that, well, they named it after him, and the “Homer” color gained fame nationwide, with several lure manufacturers incorporating it into their hard-bait lineups.

That was a stunning development for the elder Biesecker, who cared little for tournament bass fishing and less for personal recognition.

Tim Biesecker apparently inherited those traits from his father.

“Just like my dad, I don’t care for tournament fishing. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” said Biesecker, who was five or six years old when his dad first took him fishing.

“We fished small farm ponds from the bank and eventually got a boat and fished High Rock and Badin lakes,” said Biesecker, who moved away from Lexington after graduating from college and taking a teaching position.

Now retired, he occupies himself with a landscaping business and with guiding for striped bass and largemouth bass on Roanoke Rapids Lake, a Dominion Power reservoir downstream from Lake Gaston on the Roanoke River between Northampton and Halifax counties.

When Biesecker started fishing Roanoke Rapids Lake in 1978, he applied his homegrown cranking skills to the fishery and caught his share of largemouth bass. He also fished for stripers and catfish.

“Roanoke Rapids was an ideal crankbait lake with its numerous stumps and points,” said Biesecker. “The lake resembles Tuckertown; it’s small in size and almost completely undeveloped, without many houses or piers. There are only three major creeks.”

Roanoke Rapids covers 4,600 acres, and its level fluctuates from three to five feet, influenced by water entering upstream from Kerr Lake and Lake Gaston.

With the intrusion of grass, Biesecker found his crankbait-fishing strategies mainly restricted to mid-lake and lower-lake areas where the water is deeper and the grass is not as thick.

“Roanoke Rapids is still a good crankbait lake, but I do most of my cranking with shallow- and medium-running baits near stumpy flats and grass edges,” said Biesecker (252-532-1846).

On most reservoirs, summer is crankbait time, but not at Roanoke Rapids. During the hottest months, most of the fishing takes place at the upper end of the lake, close to Lake Gaston Dam and its tailrace, where largemouth bass and stripers often school together and bust shad on the surface.

“In the summer, Roanoke Rapids becomes an upper-lake fishery,” Biesecker said. “The lower lake has fish, but the majority of fish are concentrated at the upper end.”

But the upper end has become clogged with grass, and as a result, Biesecker usually sets his crankbaits aside and opts for other baits, including topwater lures such as Spro frog baits, Flukes, and swimbaits. He fishes Flukes and swimbaits on eighth- or quarter-ounce jigheads so he can make long casts to surface-feeding fish without spooking them.

Warm weather doesn’t deter bass and stripers from schooling; the critical factor is cloud cover. The surface activity comes and goes along with the cloud cover, as Biesecker found one day when he located fishing schooling within 75 yards of the dam. Surprisingly, the movement of water— which often triggers action on many lakes — doesn’t guarantee better fishing at Roanoke Rapids.

“I’ve caught about as many fish without current as with current,’ said Biesecker. “I have noticed that immediately after the power company generates water, the fish tend to turn on.”

With cloud cover, Biesecker often catches bass and stripers from the same school using primarily white Flukes and swimbaits. On occasion, he switches to a Zara Spook topwater and get strikes with that lure.

His tackle for schooling fish consists of a 7-foot, medium-action rod — his choice between spinning and baitcasting gear is determined by water clarity. In clear water, he favors a spinning reel filled with 8-pound line; in stained water, a baitcasting outfit spooled with 10- to 12-pound test line.

Once the sun breaks through, the action often slows. The fish are still there, but they become more difficult to catch.

The maximum depth of the dark, clear water in the vicinity of the dam is 10 feet. The shoreline features isolated stumps and heavy vegetation. The grass extends out from shore, limiting the use of crankbaits.

“The hydrilla is out of control and hides many points and pockets and other structural features,” Biesecker said. “If you come to the lake and fish these stretches of grass, you won’t have much success; you have to find key structure hidden within the grass.

“The water level is fairly stable at Roanoke Rapids, fluctuating only a couple of feet, but a drought in the early 90s forced the lake down 10 feet. I did a lot of walking and found bottom features I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.”

Other features near the dam are giant slab rocks. They hold fish, but they’re also just under the water’s surface, posing a serious threat to an outboard motor’s lower unit.

When the schooling fish quit and the open-water bite dies, Biesecker resorts to frog baits, which are reserved for the thickest grass mats, causing Biesecker to use 65-pound braided line and a heavy-action rod to winch the fish out. He frequently retrieves the fish along with clumps of grass.

Another tactic for fishing the grass is to punch through the thick vegetation with a heavy jig, an approach Biesecker said “is as much fun as cleaning your toenails.”

While the largemouth bass fishing remains excellent at the lake, the striper fishing has declined for several years, with most stripers now running from three to four pounds.

“If there are any big stripers here, I haven’t seen them recently,” Biesecker said “Roanoke Rapids is not a trophy striper lake.”

During the summer, most of the largemouth bass run from one to three pounds. Biesecker’s personal best weighed eight pounds, three ounces.

The lower lake comes into play during the spring, late fall and winter. It has deeper water, peaking out at about 60 feet, and with the exception of the spring spawn when the fish are shallow, its deep, stump-ridden channels and flats put the crankbait back into play. When the water cools in November, jigging spoons and slow-moving crankbaits are used to take sluggish winter bass from their haunts.