May 21, 2021 — North Carolina is trying to slow down flounder fishing on the coast, but leaders of the effort say some fishermen still aren’t doing their part.
To protect the population, the state’s planning on tightening the net on flounder fishing even further.
“There’s definitely been an impact, that’s for sure,” Sound-N-Sea Morehead charter captain Matt Paylor said. “It’s got some people in a whirlwind.”
In fall 2019, North Carolina’s Division of Marine Fisheries said flounder were being over fished, and that anglers needed to be allowed to catch only about a quarter the amount of fish they were catching to get the population back to a healthy size.