My brother-in-law and I fished the Roanoke River striper spawn Saturday April 26. This is about as close to "fishing in a barrel" as you can get. The stripers swim up from the ocean to spawn and there are hundreds of thousands of fish. We caught an estimated 40 fish between 7am and 12pm. All fish ranged from 16 to 22 inches. There are strict regulations on what's considered a "keeper" we ended up with 4 keepers. All fish were caught on live bait (heron). We used circle hooks without barb in order to release the fish unharmed. We kept three to eat but the 4th keeper was full of eggs and went back to finish her business.

We were guided by Gary Knight of and I must give Gary an A++. He was excellent company, provided top-notch live bait and service. He knew some holes that the fish seemed to like and from what I could see we out-fished the boats around us.

All-in-all an amazing amount of fun!!

Massive line at the 2-lane boat ramp 6:30am

Biggest of the day (22 inches)

18-inch Striper

River is loaded with boats!

Gary Knight (Right) and Me (Left)

nice catch man and wow there are a ton of boats fishin that area

Yeah the boat traffic is insane.  Gary says he often drifts with the current but on Saturday we caught them better while anchored.  Gary was happy cuz he didn't have to pick his way through the boat parking lot while drifting