The first thing you notice is the color of the water. At first glance it looks muddy and brown. Then when you put your fly in the water you notice that you can see it for quite a ways down. The water is stained from hundreds of miles of inflowing streams, who knows how many riverside farms and anything else that man can throw at it. But it also contains that primordial ooze. As you drift down the river try to imagine yourself in a raft or canoe and picture what it must have been like for the first european explorers to ever visit this river. You know what? You will be seeing it just as they did. The Roanoke River has the look and feel of something that has not been affected by the hand of man. Even when their is a town along it's banks, as soon as you are around the next bend it is as if you have been transported back in time. And the fishing you ask? Probably the best you will ever have experienced in your life in terms of sheer numbers of fish from day to day. The stroies you hear of people catching hundreds of striped bass in a day on the Roanoke are not exxagerrations. They are true. I have never gone fishless in a day of fishing on this river. How many bodies of water or fishing spots can anybody honestly say that about? Not too many I'd wager.

To catch a Roanoke River striped bass you have to do two things; first you must get your fly to the bottom in swift currrents and second the fly must move without moving. To get down you have several options. There are full sinking lines and they work. There are sink tips and they don't. There are also deep sinking shooting heads and these work the best. With shooting heads you maximize your casting because they only take one or two false casts and the running line allows distance of monumental proportions because of decreased resistance to the water. The second requirement (moving the fly without moving it) is slightly more difficult, but once the technique is mastered will work anywhere that striped bass are found ( as evidenced by my trip to Nantucket last summer where I skunked a whole beach of islanders). You merely strip the line hard in 4-8" inch movements and don't try to do it to fast. A strip per 3 seconds is adequate and will get you strikes. Most of the time the fish can be caught by merely drifting down the center of the river and casting in a cross current direction and retrieving the fly broadside to the current. A better way is to tie up to some bankside bushes or trees and cast into eddies that develop downstream of a snag or obstruction and retrieve upstream. Sometimes it is difficult to find a spot that allows for unobstructed backcasts however and it helps to know the river somewhat to find these spots.

If you can get a fly down in swift current and move it without moving it then you will catch stripers on the Roanoke. One word of caution, navigating the river can be treacherous. Huge boulders predominate and it is extremely easy to find them without seeing them. High water is a time when common sense should be used as the water level can rise 15 - 25 feet in a matter of hours due to the upstram power generating dam. For your first trip I would recommend going with someone who knows the river and then bring your own boat the next time. And believe this, if you go once, you will want to go again.