Pending saltwater striper record
By Bill Cochran - Roanoke Times Columnist
Big stiper
Clay Armstrong with his 68 pound 1 ounce striped bass.
Anglers dream about catching a 30-pound striped bass. How about catching one that size and another that weighed twice as much on the same rig at the same time? That was the experience of Clay Armstrong of Mechanicsville.
There?s more. His biggest fish, which weighed 68 pounds, 1 ounce, is a pending state record.
Armstrong was reported to be trolling an umbrella rig about one-mile off the Virginia Coast between Sandbridge and False Cape when the two stripers hit. He was the skipper of a sport fishing vessel named Fin Addict. The boat is out of Deltaville, but Armstrong has been docking it at Rudee Inlet in Virginia Beach during the winter striper run.
The current striped bass saltwater state record is a 63-pound, 8-ounce catch from the Atlantic off Wachapreague landed by Paul Kleckner of Greenbackville on Jan. 2, 2005.
Armstrong has submitted his catch for state record status. It could take another two weeks to process it, said Claude Bain, director of the state-sponsored Virginia Saltwater Fishing Tournament
Since Armstrong had two big striper hooked simultaneously, he could not use his landing net, so he and his crew pulled the fish through the hatch in the stern of the boat.
BILL