Pounded Flounder

The DMF says recreational anglers are hitting flounder too hard when commercial netters land more fish by a 10-to-1 ratio.

Flounder are the most popular sportfish in saltwater.

But their increasing popularity, as the target of a recreational outing and as a tasty food fish, has been keeping the flounder populations depressed in North Carolina.

Pound nets are pounding flounder, along with gill nets, ocean trawls, shrimp trawls and crab trawls. Recreational anglers also haul in lots of flounder, using gigs, bottom rigs and jigs. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that an overharvest situation has developed with the fabled flatfish.

Since the alarm sounded, there’s been a dizzying array of regulations aimed at commercial and recreational fishermen since the 1990s. Fishery managers think they have a handle on the situation, which should mean an increasing number of flounder for the future.

Compounding flounder management is the fact there are two species with separate habitat requirements, subject to different population analyses and regulations — summer flounders of the ocean and southern flounders of inland waters.

Further confounding management decisions, the two species mix at inlets and in the estuaries, as well as the fact another species, Gulf flounders, occurs in the ocean waters along with summer flounders.

Chris Batsavage is the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries flounder biologist in Morehead City. When it comes to the ups and downs of the flounder population in the state, he’s the expert.

“When it comes to recreational fishermen, flounder management gets interesting because there are three species,” he said. “In the early to the mid-90s, we had season closures and implemented size limits in the summer flounder management area because of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Fishery Management Plan from North Carolina to Massachusetts, which was designed to prevent overfishing in the ocean.”

But while the new ocean rules and regulations were aimed at one species, summer flounder, they impacted the harvest of all three species because all occur in the Atlantic.

It seemed fisheries managers couldn’t decide exactly how to manage flounders. Here’s a year-by-year rundown of fluctuating DMF ocean regulations for recreational anglers:

• In 1993 a size limit was enacted at 13 inches with no bag limit.

• In 1994 the size limit increased to 14 inches with an eight-fish bag limit until end of October and six-fish bag limit in November-December.

• In 1995 and 1996 the size limit was 14 inches with an eight-fish bag limit.

• In 1997 the size limit was 14 inches, with an eight-fish bag limit until March 31, which increased from April through December to 14 1/2 inches, with a 10-fish bag limit.

• In 1998 the size limit was 14 1/2 inches with a 10-fish bag limit until June 6, and from June 7 until November the size limit was 15 inches with and eight-fish bag limit.

• In 1999-2000 the size limit was 15 inches with an eight-fish bag limit.

• In 2001 the size limit was 15 1/2 inches with an eight-fish bag limit and a closed season from May 1-14.

• In 2002 the size limit remained 15 1/2 inches with eight-fish bag limit and a closure from April 3-July 4.

• In 2003 the size limit dropped to 15 inches with an eight-fish bag limit.

• In 2004-2006 the size limit dropped to 14 inches with an eight-fish bag limit.

Puzzled, confused recreational anglers were relieved to have consistent regulations the last three straight years.

As if the changes weren’t complicated enough, when N.C. fishery management plan went into effect in 1997, the Southern Flounder FMP was created with actual development beginning in 2000.

The initial southern flounder FMP was conservative. In N.C. inshore waters through 2001 the flounder size limit was 13 inches with no bag limit. In October 2002 the size limit rose to 14 inches in inshore waters and remains in place.

On May 1, 2005, an eight-fish bag limit was enacted for inshore waters and is still in effect.

The good thing about all this multi-species management is the size and bag limits for ocean waters now have become identical to inshore regulations, making it easier for fisherman who fish internal and ocean waters the same day. Before that, they needed a demarcation line description and a GPS to tell whether they were fishing inland waters or ocean waters.

Unfortunately, it’s likely summer flounder regulations will become more restrictive because the latest data shows overfishing is occurring. As a result, the quota will be reduced, with a goal of decreasing the summer flounder recreational harvest by 9 percent to comply with latest ASFMC rules and regulations.

There is a commercial component when it comes to managing flounder. For southern flounder, most of the commercial fishing takes place in the sounds and rivers.

Pamlico, Albemarle, Roanoke and Bogue sounds, along with the ICW and other estuaries from the Virginia to the South Carolina border are subjected to some degree of commercial flounder fishing.

A 13-inch commercial size limit was in effect for inshore waters beginning in 1988. It was increased to 14 inches in April 2005. There were concerns that in the western portions of Pamlico Sound the size limit would slash the commercial catch because the area holds mostly younger, smaller fish.

“But now, the fish are mostly at or above that limit,” Batsavage said. “So they’re still landing flounder commercially. The overall size of fish tends to increase with bigger size limits as more legal-size fish become available. It’s always hard the first couple of years.”

Southern flounder mature at ages 1 to 2. Fifty percent of females are sexually mature at 13.6 inches in length. As they grow to 14 inches, a larger percent are sexually mature, so by the time they’re harvested, they will have been able to spawn under current size limits for both recreational and commercial fishermen.

(Editor’s note: the Coastal Conservation Association of North Carolina yelled to anyone who’d listen about the relationship of age to sexual maturity in flounders for years before the DMF changed its harvest regulations)

Summer flounder mature at about the same size and ages — 1 to 3 years — so using a size limit at 14 inches has the same results as with southern flounder. For either species, a citation fish, a 5-pound female, is likely to be 3-plus years old but can be as young as 2 years.

“Males grow slower and don’t live as long,” Batsavage said. “When we study the status of stocks, we focus on the egg-laying fish because they’re more important than the males.”

Commercial landings of southern flounder from 1994 through 2002 averaged 3.8 million pounds and landings have decreased the last couple of years. In 2003 commercial landings totaled 2.2 million pounds; in 2004, 2.45 million pounds; in 2005, 1.87 million pounds.

“We can’t pinpoint a reason for the decrease in commercial catch,” Batsavage said. “The larger size limit could have played a part, along with hurricanes, which have a big affect in the fall when most commercial landings take place.”

Recreational landings of southern flounder for 1994 through 2002 averaged 143,704 pounds. In 2003 recreational landings were 221,805 pounds; in 2004, 431,425 pounds; in 2005, 361,702 pounds.

Recreational landings continue to increase, which seems an anomaly when compared to decreasing commercial catches.

“I think we’re seeing the effects of an increased fishing effort,” Batsavage said. “There are more people living at the coast and more of those people have boats.

“They’re also learning now to catch flounder.

“You have to change techniques to catch southern flounder or summer flounder because they occur in different places. But a nice thing about southern flounder is that they grow very fast.

“Anything we do to increase the population should produce good results very quickly.”

Commercial fishing for summer flounder is managed by a coast-wide quota for all states where they occur, with North Carolina receiving an allocation of the total commercial harvest. Ninety-five percent of the catch comes from fishing trawls.

From 1994 through 2002 the commercial summer flounder harvest was 2.8 million pounds; in 2003, 3.6 million pounds; in 2004, 4.8 million pounds; in 2005, 4.1 million pounds.

Some of those landings could be fish caught in other states but off-loaded in North Carolina, so the exact impact on the state’s offshore is uncertain.

Average recreational landings of summer flounder were 367,637 pounds from 1994 through 2002. In 2003 recreational landings were 125,909 pounds; in 2004, 244,984 pounds; in 2005, 177,223 pounds.

“The main reason for the recreational landings decrease in North Carolina was the 14-inch minimum-size limit,” Batsavage said. “Many flounders were caught inside the inlets before the internal waters limit was increased from 13 inches. Moving up to 14 inches in the sounds has decreased our summer flounder landings quite a bit.”

From Carteret County southward along the coast, Gulf flounder are more prevalent at artificial reefs and other hard-bottom structures.

By default they’re managed with summer and southern flounder with the majority of Gulf fish caught in the ocean in the management zone for summer flounder. Gulf flounder don’t get as large as the other two species but can reach weights of up to 6 pounds while a 10-pound southern or summer isn’t rare.

The last stock assessment for southern flounder was completed in 2004 and showed an overfished stock and that overfishing was continuing.

The goal of the FMP was to reduce the harvest of both the commercial and recreational catches and to reduce the harvest of immature flounder to rebuild the stock.

Rules were put in place to minimize bycatch of juvenile flounder in bycatch fisheries. Escape panels were required in pound nets. The panels act like a cull ring in a crab pot, by adding larger meshes in the back corners of pound nets that allow small flounder to escape. Increasing mesh size in crab trawls to 4 inches in western Pamlico helped flounder to escape from those nets in the Neuse, Pamlico and Pungo rivers.

A 5 1/2-inch minimum mesh size was implemented for large mesh gill nets to minimize the catch of undersized southern flounders. The rule takes large size nets out of the water most of the year to minimize bycatch of sub-legal-size southern flounders.

“There’ll be another stock assessment in the middle of 2008,” Batsavage said. “We’re still collecting data of biological monitoring for the two species, and it will go into the new stock assessment to see how our management changes have affected the stock assessment. It’ll give us a more complete picture of the population when we reassess the stock in 2008.”

One indication the fishing is still good are the citations issued for fish of 5 pounds and above for recreational anglers who apply for them.

“Our citations are for all species of flounder and have been increasing over the years,” Batsavage said. “In the mid-90s we issued less than 200 per year. In 2003 we issued 548; 622 in 2004; and in 2005, there were 330 citations for flounder.

“Along with increasing overall harvest trends, it looks like the number of citations has gone up as well. People are getting better at catching them and more people are fishing for them.

“It’s likely the majority of citations are for southern flounder because they are more available to the fishermen. We don’t see the number of summer flounder of 5 pounds or greater that they see in more northern states and not many Gulf flounder grow that large. But we see southern flounder every year greater than 10 pounds and some are even greater than 15 pounds.”

The N.C. 10-year average recreational catch is 314,820 pounds for summer flounders and 222,780 pounds for southern flounders. Catch numbers for southern flounders are increasing, while summer flounders they are decreasing, probably because of size restrictions for internal waters.

According to the numbers, recreational anglers seem to be the primary source of an increased fishing mortality of N.C.’s populations of both species, according to DMF biologists.

Sport anglers should watch carefully for further size and bag limit restrictions, and perhaps even season closures, if future population assessments show the current rules and regulations aren’t helping restore flounder populations in our inland and ocean waters.

Maybe the restrictions already in place will restore flounder populations. Then again, maybe they won’t.