ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 28, 1996 TAG: 9610290002
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
THIRTY minutes before daylight, Fells Lam, a retired Brethren minister, is leaving his Smith Mountain Lake home to do some fishing - not for souls this time, but for striped bass.
The vineyard he will work is near his Isle of Pines home, where deep water suddenly rushes shallow around a land point jutting into the Roanoke River arm of the lake. It is a hunting ground for broad-shouldered and perpetually hungry striped bass that rapaciously move into the shallows to plunder schools of shad and other baitfish.
It is called ``Preachers Point,'' and when someone asks Lam, 76, how many stripers he has caught there, he pauses to think a moment.
``Seven hundred or 800 - and one.''
The one is the fish he expects to catch this October morning. The fishing has been slow for Lam and the cronies he keeps in touch with, but he is confident.
``If there is one caught today, we will catch it,'' he said. ``I have that much confidence.''
Confidence, persistence and a probing mind are qualities that make Lam an accomplished angler, said Paul Calhoun a Salem photographer and writer who is Lam's fishing partner this day.
October is a transition period for striped bass, a nomadic species that moves with the seasons, the baitfish, the temperatures, the phases of the moon, the ardor to spawn, and only the Lord knows what else.
Lam sees little reason to leave the point from the post-spawn period of spring until the trees along the shoreline begin to cast their colored leaves to the water in the autumn.
``I have found a good point and I just sit here,'' he said.
But when cold weather comes, the stripers ease back into the creek coves and Lam follows, donning an extra jacket that partially covers his trademark bib overalls.
``They change their pattern,'' Lam said of the late-October stripers. ``They start feeding at daylight - a half-hour before - up in creeks.''
Well before first light, Lam will ease his 22-foot pontoon boat into the creeks and cast broken-backed Rebels and other minnow-shaped lures that come slowly across the water, leaving a seductive wake on the surface. When daylight comes, he switches to shad bait, moving it just enough with his electric motor to keep the line taut and the bait off the bottom.
``We find the slower you move it, the more possibility you will get a strike. You are looking for 20 to 25 feet,`` he said, pointing to the eerie green face of his depth-finder. ``If you get any shallower, you will hang the shad and if you go deeper, the fish are not that deep.''
But this morning, Lam isn't ready to probe the creeks. He looks for manna on the point.
``I found this point 12 years ago and fish it every morning,'' Lam said. ``People say, `Why don't you fish somewhere else?' Show me.''
Lam came to Smith Mountain Lake with big fish on his mind in the mid-'80s. He had been a pastor for 14 years, had done well financially with a string of convenience markets before the 7-Eleven era and had settled on a 215-acre farm near Charlottesville, where he had three bass-laden lakes.
``I knew every bass in the lakes. I got tired of fishing for them and wanted to fish for something big, and I was financially able to go anywhere I wanted to,'' Lam said. ``I didn't want to go to the ocean, because I get sick. So the biggest fish I could find anywhere in the interior lakes was right here.''
On Lam's first trip to Smith Mountain, a realtor suggested he go fishing with lake resident Jim McLaughlin.
When McLaughlin's techniques produced only modest success that day, Lam suggested they try vertical jigging. Lam recalls the conversation:
``You can't jig here,'' Mclaughlin said.
``Why not?'' asked Lam.
``You will get hung in the trees.''
``That doesn't matter; I am making these lures.''
``What do those things cost?''
``Seven cents apiece. So what if I lose 40?''
Lam begins jigging from the back of the boat.
``I let the line go right down to the bottom. I crank two cranks and make five jerks and the boat shook,'' he said.
``I told you you'd get hung,'' said McLaughlin.
``I'm not hung,'' Lam said. ``Whatever he is, he is shaking his head.''
A 30-pound muskie suddenly came ripping by the boat, like a torpedo with teeth, the first of 45 Smith Mountain citation certificates that paper the walls of Lam's den.
Most are for big stripers, many of them ambushed on ``Preachers Point.'' But word of a good muskie sulking in some lair still will get Lam's attention, as it did this day.
``Hey, I think I know where there is a muskie,'' he told Calhoun. ``We can try him on the way in, if you want.''
The striped bass cruise across ``Preachers Point'' less frequently nowadays, by the handful rather than in pulsating schools, a fact Lam laments.
``They aren't in here like they once were,'' he said. ``They have been caught out. You can graph across acres and acres and you will see little stripers, but you won't see big ones. I wouldn't move here now. I'd go to Tennessee.''
Cherokee Lake in Tennessee is producing striped bass now like Smith Mountain did 15 or so years ago, he said.
``I got to fish it twice this year. I got 27 one day and 17 the other,'' Lam said. ``They stock over 1 million fish a year there. They are in there. All you do is lower the [bait] down into them, crank three times and bang. We use barbless hooks so we can release them.
``They used to run across this point in schools. Now there is one or two at a time. They come up out of the deep and come right over the point hoping to surprise the shad on the other side. When you have your bait on the bottom, you get him when he comes over.''
But it can be a long wait some days. Lam watched the sun begin to paint the riffly water with pastel shades of blue and pink, then pop over the mountain with blinding brilliance. The view was worth the trip.
``One thing you have is a beautiful sunrise. That's guaranteed,'' he said.
And sometimes a fish to go with it. One of Lam's rods bowed in the shape of a new moon and the spinning reel began giving up reluctant spurts of line to a 13-pound striper that made all those farm pond bass appear anemic. When it was landed, the peak of the morning fishing had ended.
But there was that muskie.
``He has been taking ducks - big ducks,'' Lam said, his eyes twinkling. ``Don't leave a feather. I know he is still in here. There are ducks to eat and shad galore.''
LENGTH: Long : 122 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. PAUL CALHOUN. A striper bows the fishing rod of Fellsby CNBLam against the brilliance of the rising sun (upper right) at Smith
Mountain Lake. 2. BILL COCHRAN. The scales say it is a 13-pounder, a
fact reflected by the smile on Lam's face. color.