North Stanly hosted the second annual Comets Christmas Classic this week, reaching the finals of the tournament against the Corvian Community Cardinals.

The Cardinals’ roster includes players such as freshman R.J Moore Jr., the 6-foot-4 son of 1996 UConn national champion Ricky Moore, and Malachi McCutcheon, the 6-foot-5 junior and son of former Pfeiffer standout and current Catawba women’s basketball head coach Terence McCutcheon.

Corvian built a double-digit lead in the second quarter and went on to a 71-55 victory.

North Stanly (10-3) was led by All-Tournament selection Jack Williamson who scored 21 points. Jalen Walker added 17 and was named All-Tournament along with Gavin Helms.

Corvian (6-2) was led by All-Tournament selection Jack Hudson with 23 points, while McCutcheon added 18. Doug Quarles added 14 points and Moore scored 10.

The Cardinals led 12-4 midway through the first and by six after one quarter, 14-8, then an 11-2 run gave Corvian a double-digit lead. At halftime, the Cardinals led 35-18.

“There’s nothing we can practice to simulate how big they are,” North head coach George Walker said. “We missed two layups right off the bat; that could have put us up and build some momentum. They have so many rim protectors.”

Walker said his team played differently in Saturday’s loss, adding his message to the team was “we’re not going to quit.”

The Comets will take on Union Academy on Jan. 5 to open Yadkin Valley Conference play in a rematch from the semifinals of the holiday tournament.

Friday’s Result

North Stanly 70, Union Academy 67

Friday’s game between the two conference foes came down to the wire, but the Comets earned a win in what Walker called a “very intense physical battle.”

Jack Williamson had a double-double with 24 points and 10 rebounds, while Gavin Helms just missed a double-double with eight points and a team-high 13 boards.

Maddox Lowder added 12 points for North while Jacob Smith and Jalen Walker scored 11 each.

Union Academy led after one quarter, 20-16, but the Comets roared back and outscored their opponents 26-9 in the second period to lead at halftime 42-29.

In the second half, the Cardinals outscored North 17-10 in the third and 21-18 in the fourth. Union got as close as three points with two minutes left, but North was able to hit free throws down the stretch to keep the game just out of reach.

Walker said of Friday’s win: “for our kids’ resiliency was something to build on.”

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South Stanly’s men’s basketball program has not seen a start to this season like this in a long time.

The Bulls ran off nine wins in a row until suffering the team’s first loss to Corvian Community in the semifinals Friday at the Second Annual Comet Christmas Classic.

South bounced back Saturday against a current Yadkin Valley Conference opponent and claimed third place in the tourney with a 62-42 win over Union Academy.

Gavyn Miller led South (10-1) with 22 points while Cohen Whitley added 14 and Drew Gaddy 12.

Quon Harper was top scorer for Union Academy (2-10) with 11.

Leading 13-9 after one quarter, the Bulls extended the lead just before halftime. Three-pointers in the final minute by Gaddy and Whitley helped build a nine-point advantage at halftime, 32-23.

The third quarter was all South. The Bulls led by as much as 19 after a Gaddy layup and led 49-32 after the third.

South head coach Sean Whitley said the start of the season says a lot about the team’s experience.

“We’ve had essentially the same lineup for three years now,”  Whitley said. “These kids have had to grow up, undersized as underclassmen playing varsity basketball. I think this year we’re a varsity basketball team. They’ve matured; they trust each other.”

South has one final non-conference match, a home game Jan. 3 with Southwestern Randolph, before opening conference play two days later at Albemarle.

Whitley said he likes his team’s chances during conference play.

“The conference is always athletic, always physical. Union Academy is a lot better than their record.”

He said Albemarle and Mount Pleasant are both physical teams, while North Stanly’s first group “is as good as anybody. I think (the conference) is going to be a battle.”

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One of the Christmas presents I most remember pulling out from under the tree and unwrapping was one that really wasn’t a surprise.

Dan Kibler

It was 1969, I had turned 13 about six weeks earlier, and later on Christmas morning, my father and I would get on a Braniff 727 at Dulles Airport and jet to Houston to spend a week duck-hunting with my uncle on several of southeast Texas’s finest rice plantations — public and private.

The only problem? I didn’t have a shotgun. The birds and squirrels I had killed up to that time had fallen to my grandmother’s side-by-side, 20-gauge Fox shotgun. There was no way we were going to Georgia to pick it up on the way to Texas.

That’s why the long, thin package under the tree was something I pretty much expected. When the wrapping paper came off, I was holding a shiny, new Savage 20-gauge side-by-side, bored full/modified, with 3-inch chambers so I would not be at a disadvantage when black ducks, mallards and widgeon started strafing out little makeshift blinds out around the waterholes out in the rice stubble.

I killed several ducks that next week, and I killed a 4-foot western diamondback rattlesnake that was sunning along the path from our boat to a blind on the gulf side of a barrier island south of Galveston.

Plenty of North Carolina boys may be expecting their first firearm under the tree in a few days. They probably won’t start out shooting at decoying ducks, and most of the firearms might wind up .22 rifles — if they’ve graduated up from BB or pellet guns. With any luck, they’ll have a hunter-safety certificate already in hand before they push the safety off for the first time and snuggle that index finger into the space in between the trigger guard and the trigger.

It was literally years before anybody gave me any shooting instruction beyond taking my time, squeezing the trigger — not pulling it — and not stopping the swing of my shotgun when things looked right for the pellets to intercept a speeding dove. I wasn’t really proficient at rifle-shooting or wing-shooting until a much older age — which caused undue embarrassment on a number of occasions.

Thinking about that long-ago Christmas present — which now occupies a spot in my son’s gun cabinet, waiting for the grandson to get big enough to use it — gave me mind to something the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission is doing to promote shooting in 2024.

The Commission is introducing a 12-month, themed target shooting “challenge,” the “Top Shot Challenge” at six of the Commission’s shooting ranges around the state. Challenges will change on a monthly basis, with rifles, handguns and .22 rifles being the three competitive categories.

Shooters can try the challenge once a day until they complete it; they’ll receive a themed patch when they master it.

The Commission ran a pilot program this year at the John Lentz Hunter Education Complex near Ellerbe in Richmond County. The December challenge was the “Tannenbaum Challenge,” featuring Christmas ornament targets shot at 100 yards with a .22 rifle, 18 shots to hit all 10 targets.

“We’ve seen a sense of camaraderie among the participants,” said Noah Secrist, who manages the Lentz complex. “We have every level of experience participating, from people who are new to target shooting to old pros at the sport.”

Dan Kibler has covered the outdoors since 1985 as outdoors editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and later as managing editor of Carolina Sportsman until his retirement in 2021.

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A couple of years ago, when the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission decided to change its plans mid-stream and give more of the annual allotment of flounder to commercial instead of recreational fishermen, I wondered what the economic impact might be on the state’s tourism industry, what with the Commission allowing fishermen to only catch one flounder per day, and only for two weeks in September.

Dan Kibler

How many people who loved gigging flounder would quit taking trips to the coast? For how many people would it be the straw that broke the camel’s back — already limited to four speckled trout and one redfish per day — that would send them to waters other than those off the North Carolina coast to fish?

I thought about that again this past fall, when part of our family decided not to take a week’s vacation on the Outer Banks and instead spend a week at the flounder capital of South Carolina, Murrells Inlet, where two good fishermen could still fill a cooler with the flounder allowed in a day’s fishing.

I figured, well, some property owner in Dare County loses a bunch of money not getting that week’s rental fees; the real estate company that rents the property misses out on its fees, which trickles down to less money for the people that clean the cottage before our arrival. And what kind of money did we spend at a Kroger on U.S. 17 just across the bridge from Murrells Inlet instead of the Food Lion in Avon? Factor in what the restaurant community in Murrells Inlet got that would have gone to similar places on the OBX. I figure easily $3,000 to South Carolina instead of North Carolina. Wonder how many families mirrored ours, and how much the total cost of a short, almost useless flounder season is to North Carolina.

There are people who can actually put dollar-value numbers to those kinds of activities, economists who deal in things like multipliers and travel dollars and the like. While I haven’t seen any study on how the flounder fiasco has affected North Carolina tourism, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission recently released a report on the economic impact of mountain trout fishing in the Tarheel State.

The numbers are staggering. From a survey of 25,000 anglers done earlier this year — a random sampling of resident and non-resident trout anglers — the Commission discovered that fishing for rainbow, brook and brown trout in North Carolina’s mountain streams has an annual economic impact of $1.38 billion dollars. That’s “billion” with a “B.”

The survey showed that 370,000 anglers spent 4.6 million days on North Carolina waters in pursuit of trout — 322,000 residents and 48,000 non-residents. The average angler took nine fishing trips for trout each year, for a total of 12½ fishing days.

The average daily fishing trip — travel, lodging and all other expenses combined — cost $240. That comes to $587,553,393 for all trip-related expenditures — with lodging, vehicle and boat fuel and meals leading the way — and $770,000,000 on equipment expenditures. And the economists who contributed to the survey reasoned that for every one of those dollars spent, the state economy got a $1.93 return. The report said trout fishing supports 11,808 North Carolina jobs.

The Commission highlighted the differences between the 2023 study and a study published in 2015 that reported a $383 million economic impact. Why the huge difference? Start with a 29% average increase in the cost of living, but add in a 53% increase in the number of fishing license holders, and an increase in the number of trout anglers among total anglers from 18.5% to 32%.
Ten percent of anglers responding to the survey said they did most of their fishing in Ashe County, with Watauga, Avery, Jackson and Haywood rounding out the top five as the most-popular counties for trout fishing in North Carolina. That’s an interesting note, because it shows that the counties closest to the state’s biggest population centers get the most fishermen — not the counties considered to contain the state’s best trout waters.
Hatchery Supported Trout Waters (58%) were the most-popular waters fished, with Delayed Harvest Trout Waters (26%) coming in second.

Doug Besler, the Commission’s fisheries supervisor for the mountain region, said, “Given the recreational importance of trout fishing, it’s important … to understand public perceptions on management of trout and expenditures on trout fishing. These surveys put an economic value on the resources we manage and help focus our program and infrastructure, such as capital investments in modern fish hatcheries.”

So, I wonder if there’s a really sharp grad student in some university business program that would do a survey to determine the value of those flounder to the state’s tourism industry and overall economy. How much of that money has been lost over the past 10 years as marine fisheries managers have consistently valued the commercial fishing industry over recreational fishermen?

Dan Kibler has covered the outdoors since 1985 as outdoors editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and later as managing editor of Carolina Sportsman until his retirement in 2021.

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The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission has announced a series of public hearings across the state next month to discuss proposed changes to hunting and fishing regulations for the 2024-25 season.

Dan Kibler

Meetings will be as follows:

Piedmont Region, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 7 p.m., Southwest Randolph H.S. auditorium, Asheboro;

Mountain Region, Thursday, Jan. 11, 7 p.m., Haywood C.C. auditorium, Clyde;

Coastal Region, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 7 p.m., Craven County Courthouse, New Bern;

Virtual Zoom, Thursday, Jan. 18, 7 p.m. Pre-registion required at  https://ncwildlife-org.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_JQp6XDn8QSCXBrvDJJf3Bg#/registration or by calling 877-853-5247 or 888-788-0999, Webinar ID 161 386 3150.

Sportsman can also comment on proposals online at https://ncwildlife.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d7mDopIMdeyGSBU, by emailing regulatdions@ncwildlife.org, or by mail to Rule-Making Coordinator, 1701 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-1701.

The majority or regulation changes affect mountain trout, simply because of the number of streams involved. Primary among those is removing sections  of the Little River in Alleghany County, Helton Creek in Ashe County and the East Prong Roaring River in Wilkes County.

The Commission proposes to remove the delayed-harvest section of the Little River in Alleghany County and reclassify the lower 1.2-mile section to hatchery supported watts. The result is removing 1.3 miles of water from public fishing because access to private land has been restricted. It proposes removing .7 miles of water on Helton Creek because the private property through which the stream runs has been posted.

The Commission also proposes removing .7 miles of the East Prong Roaring River from the public trout waters program, making the lower boundary the Low Meadows Lane bridge below Stone Mountain State Park. Again, posted private property is forcing the Commission’s hand.

The Commission proposes changing the size limit on striped bass and its hybrids on Kerr (Buggs Island) Lake, prohibiting the possession of fish larger than 26 inches from Oct. 1-May 31. The size minimum will remain 20 inches. This proposal matches one made public by Virginia, which handles the lead management role on the 49,500-acre border reservoir.

The Commission wants to eliminate the 16-inch size minimum for striped bass and hybrids on Mountain Island Reservoir and Lake Thom-A-Lex. Stripers and hybrids are no longer being stocked on these two reservoirs.

One proposal targeting largemouth bass basically tells anglers they have been correct in complaining about the decline of the bass fishery on Shearon Harris Reservoir between Raleigh and Charlotte. Instead of a 16- to 20-inch slot limit, the daily 5-fish limit will allow two fish less than 14 inches.

The Commission proposes eliminating harvest of American shad on the Yadkin-Pee Dee River basin upstream of Blewett Falls Dam and prohibiting harvest in the Roanoke River upstream from Roanoke Rapids Dam.

A final freshwater proposed rule change would remove the daily creel limit of 20 fish and minimum size limit of 8 inches for crappie in Ramseur Lake because the population has become stunted.

The Commission proposes reducing the daily creel limit for flounder from four fish to one fish, with a Sept. 1-14 season open in Joint and Inland waters. This makes regulations in those waters match those in Coastal waters.

As far as proposed changes to hunting regulations go, the Commission wants to move the antler-less season on the portion of the Yadkin River Game Land in Montgomery County from moderate to maximum. This allows those lands to have the same regulations as the rest of the game lands and surrounding private lands.

The Commission also wants to shift the blackpowder and gun deer seasons in the Western region so blackpowder hunting begins on the second Saturday before Thanksgiving and runs until gun season opens the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It would also move the one-week and one-day antlerless seasons to Thanksgiving week.

Last, the Commission wants to designate a 4,830-acre portion of the R. Wayne Bailey-Caswell Game Lands as the Caswell Small Game Focal Area, which will require hunters to draw permits for all quail and woodcock hunting and point-of-sale permit hunting only for rabbit and squirrels outside the usual three-days-per-week format.

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The 2023 Special Olympics North Carolina (SONC) Fall Tournament concluded Nov. 18 in the Charlotte area, ending a weekend of competition for nearly 1,100 athletes and Unified partners from across the state, according to Keith L. Fishburne, SONC president/CEO.

Unified partners are individuals without intellectual disabilities who train and compete alongside Special Olympics athletes.
Fall Tournament is SONC’s second largest state-level competition, hosted at venues in Charlotte and Concord. Athletes competed in bocce, cycling, golf, roller skating, softball, soccer and tennis.

To ensure fair competition, athletes were placed in competition divisions based on age, gender and ability level. Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded to the top three finishers in each division, followed by fourth through eighth-place ribbons.

Stanly athletes, their team (if applicable) and place were:

• Angela M. Kirk, Stanly Hot Shots, bocce doubles, fourth place;

• Angela Elizabeth Townsend, Stanly Hot Shots, bocce doubles, fourth place;

• Harry L. Cohen, Stanly Roll Us Away, bocce doubles, silver medal;

• Alexander Hunt, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Adam Christopher Hupp, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Jonathon Martin, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Bryce Ray Neal, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Clint Edwards Phillips, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal; and

• Elliot Schmehl, Stanly Roll Us Away, bocce doubles, silver medal.

Athletes who competed in the 2023 SONC Fall Tournament represented the following counties/agencies: Alamance, Alleghany, Avery, Beaufort/Hyde, Brunswick, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Caldwell, Carteret, Caswell Center, Catawba, Cleveland, Craven, Cumberland, Dare, Davidson, Davie, Durham, Forsyth, Franklin, Gaston, Guilford, Guilford/High Point, Harnett, Iredell, Johnston, Lake Norman, Lee, Lincoln, Madison, Mecklenburg, Moore, Murdoch Center, Nash, New Hanover, Onslow, Orange, Pitt, Polk, Qualla Boundary, Stanly, Surry, Union, Wake, Watauga, Wayne, Wilkes and Wilson.

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The 2023 Special Olympics North Carolina (SONC) Fall Tournament concluded Nov. 18 in the Charlotte area, ending a weekend of competition for nearly 1,100 athletes and Unified partners from across the state, according to Keith L. Fishburne, SONC president/CEO.

Unified partners are individuals without intellectual disabilities who train and compete alongside Special Olympics athletes.
Fall Tournament is SONC’s second largest state-level competition, hosted at venues in Charlotte and Concord. Athletes competed in bocce, cycling, golf, roller skating, softball, soccer and tennis.

To ensure fair competition, athletes were placed in competition divisions based on age, gender and ability level. Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded to the top three finishers in each division, followed by fourth through eighth-place ribbons.
Stanly athletes, their team (if applicable) and place were:

• Angela M. Kirk, Stanly Hot Shots, bocce doubles, fourth place;

• Angela Elizabeth Townsend, Stanly Hot Shots, bocce doubles, fourth place;

• Harry L. Cohen, Stanly Roll Us Away, bocce doubles, silver medal;

• Alexander Hunt, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Adam Christopher Hupp, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Jonathon Martin, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Bryce Ray Neal, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal;

• Clint Edwards Phillips, Stanly Bocce Barons, bocce team, silver medal; and

• Elliot Schmehl, Stanly Roll Us Away, bocce doubles, silver medal.

Athletes who competed in the 2023 SONC Fall Tournament represented the following counties/agencies: Alamance, Alleghany, Avery, Beaufort/Hyde, Brunswick, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Caldwell, Carteret, Caswell Center, Catawba, Cleveland, Craven, Cumberland, Dare, Davidson, Davie, Durham, Forsyth, Franklin, Gaston, Guilford, Guilford/High Point, Harnett, Iredell, Johnston, Lake Norman, Lee, Lincoln, Madison, Mecklenburg, Moore, Murdoch Center, Nash, New Hanover, Onslow, Orange, Pitt, Polk, Qualla Boundary, Stanly, Surry, Union, Wake, Watauga, Wayne, Wilkes and Wilson.

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As the Uwharrie Wampus Cats get set for their second season in 2024, the team will have a new head coach at the helm.

Josh Kent

Josh Kent will take over as skipper of the summer collegiate team that plays its home game at downtown Albemarle’s Don Montgomery Park. Kent spent the 2023 baseball season as a graduate assistant coach at Carolina University, a Christian college based in Winston-Salem.

He takes over for Houston Wright, who led the Wampus Cats to an 18-17 record in their first season in 2023.

“I am super excited for the opportunity to get my first summer underway as the head coach of the Wampus Cats,” Kent said. “I can’t wait to represent the city of Albemarle and give the Albemarle area a great season to look forward to. We are going to have an amazing group of guys that the fans are going to love.”

The 26-year-old Kent played college baseball for three seasons at the NCAA Division II level before finishing up his college playing career back home with the Carolina University Bruins. As a shortstop for the Bruins, he hit 12 home runs and batted .359 in his senior season at Carolina University, helping the team finish second in the nation in their division. Early in his career, he played mostly as a second and third baseman.

During summers in college, Kent played on North Carolina summer teams and also spent a summer playing with the Galion Graders of the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League, a very-competitive league in the Midwest.

“I want our players to get better every day, compete and have fun,” Kent said. “I want to give players the opportunity to become leaders on our team so they can go back to their schools in the fall ready to add to their programs.”

Team co-owner and president Greg Sullivan said he’s excited to have another coach with North Carolina ties.

“Coach Wright did a great job for us building a competitive roster in Year 1 this past summer and got talented, hard-working players who bought into what we’re doing in Albemarle,” Sullivan said. “We expect to have some returners and have also begun adding some exciting new players to the mix.

“We’re excited to see how Coach Kent can build on the work we’ve started here as we get set to bring in a challenging slate of new opponents this year.”

Host families and volunteers needed

The team said they got off to a good start in terms of building relationships with families that hosted players for the summer this past year.

“We had a handful of out of area players this past summer who were housed locally,” Sullivan said. “We want to maintain a local and regional identity with the team but having some host families allows us to bring in a few key additions to the club every year to better compete with the best teams in our area and it lets top college players experience the Albemarle area. Our host families also get complimentary season tickets to all our home games.”

Anyone interested in becoming a host family or volunteering with the team in 2024 can reach out to Greg Sullivan at greg@wampuscatsbaseball.com.

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Before the turn of the century, only one player in the history of the Albemarle women’s basketball program had scored 1,000 career points.

Kricket Morton was the school’s first 1,000 point club member for the women’s program in 1989.

From 2011 until the start of the season, four players had joined the list: Paige McConlogue (2011), Akela Branch (2013), Kyleigh McLendon (2015) and Zycoria Tillman (2018). Branch is the program’s all-time leading scorer with 1,805 points.

Albemarle junior Amari Baldwin became the sixth member of the women’s 1,000 point club for the Bulldogs during a recent 73-23 home win versus West Stanly.

She finished the game with 41 points, shooting 17-of-21 from the field. Bianca Robinson added 18 for Albemarle in the win.

Baldwin added 25 points in a 65-64 road win at Chatham Charter last Tuesday.

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The march across North Carolina of chronic wasting disease continues.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission last week announced that an even dozen white-tailed deer have been confirmed with the always-fatal neurological disease that affects deer and other members of the cervid family.

The latest infected deer is a 2½-year-old doe killed in Franklin County earlier this fall during gun season in the county north of Raleigh.

Biologist Brad Howard, chief of the Commission’s Wildlife Management Division, said this most-recent discovery — far removed from the original area where the disease was discovered, was disappointing, but he said it shows that the state’s program for detecting the disease is working.

“I want to point out that this detection in Franklin County, along with the last two unexpected CWD positive cases we detected in Johnston and Cumberland counties, doesn’t necessarily mean that CWD is spreading rapidly across the state,” Howard said.

“More likely, it means that all the sample submissions we are getting from hunters is really helping to find the places where CWD has already gotten a foothold in the state.

“It likely that it’s been in these places for a few years and had not been detected. I’d rather CWD not be here at all, but if it is here, I’m glad we are finding out about it as soon as possible.”

CWD can be transmitted between deer through saliva, urine and feces and the movement of infected deer carcasses. Deer appear healthy in early stages of the disease, often not showing any signs of neurological problems for a year or two.

Howard said that Franklin County will become a Primary Surveillance Area next year, and surrounding areas will become Secondary Surveillance Areas, with changes in deer regulations, sampling requirements and prohibitions on the movement of deer carcasses.

The original discovery of CWD in North Carolina was two years ago in Yadkin County. A second infected deer in Yadkin County was found the next year, then five in Surry County, one in Stokes County, one in Wilkes County, then one each in Cumberland, Johnston and Franklin County.

Big jack earns state-record distinction

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries said a Massachusetts angler has caught the first-ever state-record Almaco Jack, a 26-pound, 15.6-ounce fish caught near the D Wreck off Morehead City on Nov. 8.

Angler Matt Frattasio was fishing with Riptide Charters in 80 feet of water, using a live menhaden for bait, when he caught the big jack on a Hogy Tuna jigging rod mated with a Daiwa Saltist MQ 14000 reel spooled with 50-pound braid.

The big jack was 36.4 inches long (fork length) and 26 inches in girth. Officials at the Division’s headquarters in Morehead City weighed and identified the fish. There was no previous state-record for Almaco Jack, but the Division decided that Frattasio’s fish was so big — Florida’s state record is 35 pounds, 9 ounces — that it deserved to be considered a state record.

State will add 16 additional game wardens in 2024

The N.C. General Assembly has approved funding for 16 new wildlife enforcement officer positions, the first increase in the size of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s enforcement staff in 46 years.

Applications for the next Wildlife Law Enforcement Basic Academy training for current positions will be available next May.

The Commission’s enforcement staff will increase from 208 to 2224. Since the last increase in 1977, the sale of hunting, fishing and trapping licenses has increased by more than 200%, and North Carolina’s population has increased 87%.

Cam Ingram, the Commission’s executive director and a former wildlife enforcement officer, said, “Adding 16 new officer positions … will allow us to better protect and conserve our state’s wildlife, habitats and natural resources.”

State wants 50-fish limit on finger mullet

The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission, which last month instituted a ban on all recreational harvest of striped mullet, aka finger mullet, until Jan. 1, 2024, has made recommendations for managing the coastal fish — popular for its roe and its value as a baitfish — that includes a 50-fish daily creel limit for recreational fisherman, along with restrictions for commercial fishing.

The recommendations will go to public comment at a series of public meetings from Dec 18 to Jan. 17.

The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries determined in 2022 that the state’s striped mullet are overfished, and overfishing is occurring.

Recommendations affecting recreational fishermen include the 50-fish limit, plus a for-hire vessel (charter boats) limit equal to fish fish per angler the vessel is licensed to carry.

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