Southwest Virginia is Losing Lural Bed Lake

UP DATE : HERE

Lake Lural is a 330 acre impoundment just out side of Saltville, Virginia. It has stood as a tool for flood control for Big Tumbling Creek, which is a pay fishery. Unfortunately, the dam has sprung a leak. Bill Cochren, an outdoor writer with the Roanoke Times, writes -

There are a couple of seepages in the dam of this Department of Game and Inland Fisheries public fishing impoundment, and while they aren’t massive, they also aren’t the kind you can plug with a finger or two.

The fact is -- and get ready for a shock -- it may take as much as $2 million to cover the repairs, according to Gary Martel, DGIF fish division chief.

Sadly, this is not the only lake in the state that has a dam in need of repair. Although, the state says that Lural Bed Lake is a top priority.

I am a native of Southwest Virginia and grew up relatively close to Saltville, but never knew that Lural Bed Lake held trout. Though todays trout numbers are apparently nothing like days gone by.

The trout fishing through the early 1980s was good enough to lure anglers from as far away as the Roanoke Valley. The brookies, some exceeding 3 pounds, took on the dark color of the lake’s water, yet were garnished with bright red specks encased in sky-blue halos.

Ignorance seems to be the reason for the decline of the trout populations in the lake, but I like the way Bill puts it,

For a number of exciting years, Laurel Bed Lake was the place to catch citation brook trout until the fishery began to fall apart. For one thing, some fishermen insisted on illegally releasing rock bass into the lake, fish that competed with the trout and slowed their growth. Compounding that stupidity were problems with high acidity and low oxygen and summertime temperatures that were marginal for brook trout. (Emphasis mine)

I hope that they will be able to restore the lake to what it once was, but for now it looks like by July Lural Bed Lake will be a mud hole.

Matthew