A moratorium against possessing stripers from anywhere in the Cape Fear River basin below the B. Everett Jordan Dam has been in place since 2008. Beginning in 2003, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission conducted comprehensive surveys on the striper populations in the Cape Fear River system and determined the population was dangerously low and with minimal recruitment. After seeing this for five years, the moratorium was instituted to try to give the stripers some protection to increase their numbers.
For years, stripers were stocked in the Cape Fear system, but they were done with fingerlings whose eggs were collected in the Roanoke River. Beginning in 2010, a stocking was done with fingerlings from eggs collected from Cape Fear system stripers, with 110,000 fingerlings between six and eight inches released. An identical stocking took place in 2012.
Biologists hope the completion of the rock-arch rapids and fish ladder at Lock and Dam No. 1 in Riegelwood will allow stripers to proceed upstream, and they hope results from their studies will be good enough to generate funds to build similar structures at Lock and Dam No. 2 near Elizabethtown and Lock and Dam No. 3 between Tar Heel and Fayetteville.
Biologists believe that if stripers can be given access to their traditional spawning grounds, Cape Fear River stripers can rebound to pre-dam levels within 10 years.
