Guide Maynard Edwards believes that High Rock’s striped bass don’t reach trophy sizes because of a liberal creel limit and heavy fishing pressure.
“You can keep eight fish per day at any of the Yadkin chain (lakes) of 16 inches minimum size, and two can be less than 16 inches,” he said. “It’s a ridiculous limit.”
High Rock is within an hour’s drive of Greensboro, High Point, Lexington, Winston-Salem, Asheboro, Thomasville, Salisbury, Charlotte, Kannapolis and Concord, so it receives fishing pressure from thousands of anglers from those metropolitan areas.
Edwards said the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission should drop the daily creel to four fish and increase the minimum length to 18 inches.
“I’m not sure even 18 inches is big enough, but I know a majority of fishermen around here would love to see (the creel) brought down to four — except the ‘meat’ fishermen,” he said.
Edwards said he and “three or four” other fishermen approached the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission about lowering the creel to four fish.
“They said, ‘Well, we figure there should be a place in North Carolina where a person can go and catch and keep them,’ ” he said. “They said, ‘It’s a put-and-take situation.’ But to me the 75,000 (fingerlings) they put in aren’t enough to maintain (good fishing), relative to the pressure High Rock gets.”
The only thing that’s saved High Rock’s striped bass is their toughness and pure luck, Edwards said.
“High Rock’s the shallowest, dingiest, ugliest water on the entire river — and it’s never had a fish kill,” he said. “The stripers in this lake just don’t die off. The only one it ever had was in 2002, the drought year when the lake went down 26 feet.
“But you can go to Badin Lake, where the water is deep and clear, and they die in a heart beat down there. Go figure.”
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