Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 15, 1993 TAG: 9304150019
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A FISH WORTH A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES FOR 6-YEAR-OLD
Just past noon, a can of beans and franks began to have more fascination for 6-year-old Jacob Waller than thoughts of catching a fish. So he turned aside from his fishing rod to eat lunch.That's when a giant striped bass - a 50-pound, 8-ounce potential state record - gobbled up his bait.
Jacob was aboard a 16-foot boat on Leesville Lake with his dad and mom, his 12-year-old brother, Travis, and his grandfather, Donald Burnette. The family, from the Gretna area, was on an Easter-break outing with the idea of enticing catfish to shrimp-baited hooks.
When Jacob's Zebco 33 fishing outfit suddenly bowed double in the rod rack, his dad, Tim, grabbed it and set the hook.
"At first Tim thought it was a catfish," said Jacob's mom, Cheryl, who had brought along her crocheting, in case things got dull. "He did know it was a big fish."
It wasn't the kind of hook-up where you'd turn to a 6-year old and say, "Come land this fish that's on your line."
So Tim maintained a death grip on the Zebco, watching the thread-like 10-pound line rapidly melt from the reel as the fish bulled its way toward open water.
Tim, a construction worker who's a take-charge kind of guy, suddenly realized that he wasn't exactly in control here.
"He just kinda let the fish go as much as he could," Cheryl said. "He was real scared of breaking the line. He thought at one point the fish had all the line off the reel but about 10 yards."
When that happened, Tim told his crew to reel in the other lines and raise the anchor. He'd have to chase the fish with the boat.
Mike Duval, a fish biologist supervisor from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, later would marvel that the fish was caught on such modest tackle, especially after he measured the lunker's 52-inch length and 29-inch girth.
"He [Tim] just kinda hung on for the ride," Duval said. "I don't think there was any way of controlling that fish. I think he was more at the whims of where that fish was going rather than the other way around."
No one is certain how long the battle lasted. Cheryl remembered the fish making three - maybe four - blistering runs.
"At the time, no one thought to look at their watch. We think it took somewhere around 30 minutes."
Once the fish was in the boat, the challenge was to find state-certified scales large enough to weigh it. The Wallers drove from Leesville to Brookneal, but couldn't locate a set that would do the job.
At 9:30 p.m., they finally returned to Gretna and rousted the owner of a grocery store out of bed to weigh the fish. It smashed his scales to the 50 1/2-pound mark.
The current Virginia striped bass record is a 44-pound, 14-ounce Smith Mountain Lake fish landed July 7, 1992, by Gary Tomlin of Buena Vista.
It generally takes a couple of weeks or more for a potential record fish to clear the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries record fish committee, Duval said.
"It looks to me like it is a clean application," he said. "There are no real questions in my mind."
It would go into the record book under Tim's name. Jacob, this time, will have to settle for a can of beans and franks and some lifetime memories.