Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990 TAG: 9005280156
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
James Dalton of Hampton Roads won the two-day Virginia B.A.S.S. Federation Mr. Bass tournament with a five-fish total that weighed a modest 7.9 pounds.
"It was depressing," said host Richard Stanford, secretary of the Triangle Bassmasters of the New River Valley. "A good percentage didn't catch anything. I heard some say, `I don't care if I never come back.' "
The contestants, who had earned their way into the tournament by becoming the top fishermen in their back-home bass clubs, were scrapping for a position on the eight-man Virginia state team, which can lead to a berth in the prestigious B.A.S.S. Masters Classic.
A front had whistled through the day before the tournament, and the wind let up only a little during the two days of hard-fought competition. Serious bass anglers are accustomed to tough fishing conditions; it is part of the sport.
What many of them couldn't believe, though, was the amount of trash in the lake: 55-gallon drums, pieces of boat docks floating about, plastic bottles and jugs, tires, logs, old boat hulls. Dan Falwell Jr., a contestant from Blackstone, even came across a chest-type deep freezer.
And there were dead fish, too.
"I fish the Potomac River a lot and I'll see some dead fish, but I've seen ten times more dead fish in the last four days," said contestant Willie Craft of Woodbridge.
Not overlooked by the contestants who sent their sleek, heavily powered boats up the winding Peak Creek arm of the lake was the reddish discharge seeping downstream like an open sore.
Craft thought he could smell it. Robert Bruseen of Manassas watched his pH meter take a jump when he ran into it.
It came as no surprise to the locals. They call it the Red Tide and have been fussing about it for months.
The state Water Control Board says the red discharge mostly leaches from the old Allied Chemical Plant, which manufactured iron sulfide for 50 years. It closed in 1976.
A debate has raged over who is responsible for cleaning up the mess: Downtown East, which is the present owner of the property or the Pulaski Mall, which Downtown East says sends its runoff sweeping across the old chemical piles when it rains.
Tired of the finger-pointing and what they see as less than a satisfactory response from state officials, nearly 200 citizens crowded a meeting hall recently to form the Claytor Lake Association. The group made environmental and cleanup issues a major concern and has set its next meeting June 18, 7 p.m. at the Pulaski High School.
Last week, Health Department officials said fish from Claytor, including Peak Creek, contain metals but are safe to eat, following tests by the state Water Control Board. Tournament B.A.S.S. fishermen release all of their catch anyway, but they remain concerned about the pollution, the trash and the tough fishing at Claytor, said Stanford.
The past two years, at the B.A.S.S. Masters Classic in Richmond, the Triangle Bassmasters have received national awards from B.A.S.S and the Department of Interior for cleanup efforts at Claytor.
Still, the trash piles up, said Stanford.
"What is happening, rather than taking trash to a landfill the people are just using the lake for a dump," he said. It is cheaper to dump old tires off a bridge than it is to pay to dispose of them at the landfill.
The club plans still another cleanup June 23. "It's kind of like our Earth Day event at the lake," he said.
Through a new environmental-awareness program that B.A.S.S is calling Voice of the Environment (V.O.T.E), Stanford hopes to get fishermen and law enforcement officials involved more in reporting and prosecuting people who litter.
As for the fishing, Joe Williams doesn't belive it had declined all that much. He is a biologist with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries whose assignment is to manage the lake's fishery resources.
"We just finished electrofishing samples up there, and our catch rates were down somewhat from last year, but I don't think that is an indication that the population is in bad shape," he said.
"In the Peak Creek arm, I would say that more than 50 percent of the fish that we collected were from 12 inches on up to 16 inches. Those were smallmouth, spotted and largemouth bass. There are a lot of large fish in the Peak Creek arm. It doesn't look like the population is in bad shape."
The state's last creel survey, conducted in 1985, revealed a decline in the catch rate of Claytor fishermen, "but we attributed that to a hot, dry summer," Williams said.
Claytor probably is cleaner now that it was 10 or 15 years ago, Williams said, "Because it was in '87 when the Pulaski sewage treatment plant stopped discharging into Peak Creek and began discharging into the New River below Claytor Lake," he said. "So the Peak Creek area of the lake has cleaned up a lot since 1987. Years ago there were really bad algal blooms on the creek, and that isn't happening any more."
Metals first were spotted by the Water Control Board in the mid-1970s. They have included iron, zinc, lead and selenium. Calling attention to them during recent months has been the reddish tint in Peak Creek as rains have eroded the clay caps over old chemical deposits.
"There are heavy metals in just about every water system," said Williams. "I don't think that has anything to do with the so-called decline of fishing."
As for all of the dead fish spotted by contestants in last weekend's Mr. BASS tournament, Stanford said that may be the result of illegal fishing activities rather than pollution. Most of these fish were spotted well up the lake above the Peak Creek area.
The 4,500-acre lake, a winding expansion of the New River, receives a tremendous amount of fishing pressure, and that lowers fishing results as much as anything, he said.
"The lake is really beaten to death, as small as it is," he said. "People come from West Virginia and Southwest Virginia."
Williams said his major concern is the sudden proliferation of gizzard shad in Claytor.
"Last year we might have seen one or two shad, but in Peak Creek this year I ran into school after school of huge shad," he said.
Most were 12 to 14 inches in length, past the size that game fish can use as food.
"I think what will happen is, they will take up space [from game fish]," said Williams, who believes the shad were introduced by striped-bass fishermen using them for bait.
by CNB