The author holds a Buggs Island striped bass that he caught while fishing Nutbush Creek in January. Photo courtesy of Phillip Gentry

The morning was just starting to turn from "I'm an idiot for being out here" cold to just plain "cold." At least that's the way the two anglers huddled in the back of the big Maycraft center console described it. Daylight had broken somewhere off to the east of Grassy Creek, but the sun hadn't topped the trees yet, so it was still cold. It wasn't that unusual of a morning for "Ramrod" Hall, a full-time striped bass guide on Buggs Island (or Kerr Lake if you preferred the government's terminology for the nearly 50,000-acre impoundment of the Roanoke River that is also fed by several smaller tributaries). If the two guys, who were positioned to watch the rods that were pointing out to the side of the boat, thought it was cold now, they should have experienced the "early edition" of this morning, which started at 3:30 while Ramrod was throwing the cast net in the dark for the tank full of bait the two anglers were leaning on.

Hall, from the nearby town of Henderson, has been a striper guide on these waters for 18 years and knew that the two guys in the back of his boat were about to forget about how cold it was. The reason he knew that was two-fold. The first was that his sonar graph was displaying a familiar version of "spaghetti with meatballs." The second was that the small armada of yellow planer boards that he was towing out to the side and behind his guide boat was just about to enter the war zone. In fact, the far right board had sputtered like a toy boat with engine trouble and then had completely broke formation and was going in reverse.

"Watch that right rod," instructed Ramrod to his clients, alerting them to the fight that was about to start, "easy now, let him eat it." The retreating board reversed even faster before submerging altogether, causing the rod that was attached to the line to bend over double.

"Alright, get him," coached the guide. One of the anglers plucked the hurting rod from the rod holder and laid back on it as the reel screamed from rapid loss of line. The other angler moved in behind the first to let his buddy have some room when Ramrod shouted to him that a rod on the left side was going down. No sir, neither one of these guys would think about the cold again for the remainder of this trip. They were locked in battle with a pair of Buggs Island stripers.

After the fight was over, and both of his clients were visibly warmer from the exertion, Hall offered some tips on what to expect for the remainder of the trip.

"I look for stripers moving into these creeks looking for pods of bait," explained the guide. "This time of year when the water temps really start to get cold, the baitfish -- gizzard shad, threadfins, alewives and blueback herring -- come back in here to try to find some warmer water.