June Meeting Summary

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Thanks to all who attended the last meeting.


Stephens Ammons Executive Director of North Carolina's Coastal Conservation Association was in attendance to inform our group about the legislative issues that the CCA is actively Lobbying for or has taken a position on.

• Outer Banks Access;
  • I won't attempt to explain the entire situation but instead invite you to visit this website and read the details for yourself. http://www.islandfreepress.org/CatBeachAccessIssues.html
  • What's at stake is the access to popular fishing areas of the Outer Banks.

• Boat Tailoring Issue;
  • The NC State Highway Patrol recently began enforcing rules that classify boat trailers as property hauling vehicles making them subject to oversize rules In some cases, requiring a CDL, Oversized Banners , and special permits. These requirements can effect boats as small as 20 ft.

• Lock and Dams in the Cape Fear River;
  • There are three locks on the Cape Fear river that are no longer used for navigation. However, these locks and dams have impeded the upstream migration of several anadromous fish species. The removal of locks 1 and 3 are impossible because Wilmington and Fayetteville draw water from the pools created by these dams. Rep. Margaret Dickinson has introduced legislation that would require the Corps of Engineers to repair these dams and construct fish weirs at locks 1 and 3. North Carolina would then assume ownership of the dams and maintain them. The Fish weirs would mean the unobstructed migration and subsequent spawning of Shad, River Herring, Atlantic and Sharp Nosed Sturgeon, and Striped Bass . This would assist in the recovery of these species and create recreational fishing opportunities in Fayetteville that rival Weldon on the Roanoke River.

• Red Drum Management Plan
  • I must admit to not knowing the details of the plan but this is our state fish and of vital importance to the coastal fisheries. The Red Drum is recovering and it our responsibility to see that we continue to gain ground with great fishing treasure. Please, study the plan.

• Destructive Gear out of the water
  • This debate usually breaks down into the age old Commercial Fisherman vs. the Recreational fisherman. However, Gill nets and inshore trawling are indiscriminate killers of undersized fish and unattended catches (ByCatch). The argument is not to bring hardship on the Commercial Fishing community but to allow the fish that grow in these inshore nurseries the opportunity to reach breeding maturity in order to preserve the stocks for all.

At the current the CCA has volunteers actively working with legislators on these topics but they have plans to employ fulltime lobbyist that can further promote these causes.

Anyone who is further interested in advancing the toward opening a Fayetteville Area CCA Chapter should contact myself or Stephen Ammons. In order to be a chapter, the group must conduct a Banquet to raise to finance the legislative causes and programs of the CCA.

FAAN FISHING TRIP
We will have our fishing trip on July 12th. We are planning to leave out of Southport for a day of Saltwater fishing in the Cape Fear Area. We will depart from at 300AM from the Bordeaux Shopping Center. The early start is necessary to ensure that we have an opportunity to get launched and have a place to park at the Wildlife Ramp. We have 4 boats available giving us 12 open spots for non-boaters. Anyone is welcome to join us and we will car pool with in the Boaters Vehicles to the Fish Factory Road Wildlife ramp in Southport. You will be responsible for your own food and drinks and sharing the expense of the trip with your boater. Shared cost should be around $40 for the trip. If you wish to attend or volunteer your boat duties please contact Jim Thomas by July 5th. bthomas659@aol.com

New Items
We are beginning to work on a few new things for our monthly meetings. We discussed the possibility of inviting Guest Speakers on a regular basis. It may be necessary to cover expenses of these speakers at times and we discussed the possibility of getting local businesses to sponsor these meetings while providing them with exposure and patronage. Rob Latta has agreed to work on designing some signs and literature for the events and helping us with the promotional aspect of these projects

There are lots of great opportunities for our group to fishing in Fayetteville and bring others to networks creating more friends and fishing companions for us all. However, with so much to do we have decided to spread some projects around and some individual members will begin to organize and conduct some of our events and monthly meetings. With this in mind, we discussed asking one of the Fort Bragg Biologist to address our group and to take the time to tell us of the opportunities for fishing on Fort Bragg and to answer any questions that we may have. Jonathan Osheim volunteered to contact them and is well under way at this point.

You may recall that we put up a website a couple of month's ago. As it turns out Robert Harber happens to be a skilled computer guy and he has volunteered to work on our website design to provide better information on Fayetteville Fishing and more website content.

We are also posting a poll as to determine a regular night of the month to meet on. This will be on our forum at Ncangler.com. The choice is either the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Thursday of each month. If you do not wish to vote at ncangler.com simply reply to this e-mail telling which night is best for you.

Thanks again to all who came out for the meeting. We continue to see more and more new faces and it becomes more fun every time. Please, feel free to suggest new ways to hold meeting, events that you would like to see, or other ideas that you may have to improve our network. Please, tell a friend about us. Membership is easy . They can simply go to www.fayettevilleanglers.com click on the Join the FAAN tab , and sign up.