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Thursday, January 20, 2011
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| Catch and release... You're doing it wrong. Photo courtesy JH Miller. |
Oregon Inlet is known for it's excellent fishing, both for recreational purposes and for commercial purposes. Now, the beautiful inlet is now a graveyard, as thousands of striped bass float lifelessly just offshore of Oregon Inlet. Charter captains have reported miles upon miles of dead striped bass. Commercial fisherman are thought to be the culprit. Apparently the trawlers caught a net full of fish, realized they caught too many, and threw the dead fish back in order to sustain their 50 fish limit. Most of the fish thrown back were evidently dead or dying. Too read the articles and updated info, click here.
“The NC Division of Marine Fisheries is investigating reports of numerous dead striped bass floating in the ocean waters in northern Dare County areas.
The estimates of the numbers of dead fish have ranged from in the hundreds to in the thousands. The division is trying to determine the actual extent and cause of this event. However, the fish appear to be discards from fishing activity.
There was extensive commercial and recreational striped bass fishing in these waters over the holiday weekend. Both commercial and recreational fisheries have had issues with discards of striped bass in the past. However, this is the first time in several years that striped bass have migrated this close to the shore.
The commercial striped bass trawl fishery is scheduled to close at 6 p.m. Thursday. The division will evaluate the effort and landings in this fishery to determine if quota remains and if the fishery should reopen. The division will also consider if alternative management measures could be used to prevent future discard mortality.”
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2 comments:
sucks so much. commercial fishing has really hit the outerbanks area.Redfish population is declining due to illigal netting. They pretty much wiped out the schoolie bass population earlier and they have just come back to be harassed again by the commercial fisherman.
The Coast Guard is urging the public to notify them of any illegal commercial or recreational fishing. Hopefully they'll catch the fisherman behind this...