Sunday morning, November 26, started out like many others for Greg Dennis, Hugh Sutton and the other folks who live along Archers Creek, a small creek that cuts into Emerald Isle from Bogue Sound, about five miles east of Bogue Inlet.Dennis was having a cup of coffee at about 9:30, when his phone rang, and an excited Sutton exclaimed there was something big in the creek and to look out his window. Dennis moved to his window overlooking the narrow creek and saw Sutton, in his skiff, following something around in the dark shallow water.
Responding to Sutton’s call to “Come help me and we’ll see what it is,” Dennis rushed downstairs to his dock and his wife’s skiff, resting on the lift. As the skiff was being lowered into the water, Dennis ducked back into his garage and grabbed a rod and reel, with a Hopkins lure already tied on.
Dennis said he thought they were watching a king mackerel that had gotten confused and swam through the inlet, up the sound and into the creek.
After chasing the fish around the creek for a while, the men got a glimpse of a deeply forked tail, with yellow coloring and thought they were chasing a yellowfin tuna. It wasn’t until they had the gaffed tuna beside the boat that they realized it was a bluefin tuna.
At this point the men realized they had made a serious mistake and had a fish that was illegal. Dennis has all the required permits on his larger boat, which was docked in Harkers Island, but they were on his wife’s skiff.
Weighing their options and deciding on what was right and wrong, they made the decision to take the big fish (77 inches and approximately 275 pounds) to Island Harbor Marina to tag and register the fish so it was properly recorded and counted.
State and federal fisheries officers met the men at the marina and after measuring, tagging and registering the fish, they confiscated it.
The men admitted their mistake and said they would accept the responsibility for their actions. The officers told them they would file reports that would be reviewed before deciding what would be done. They said a fine was possible but it would be several months before the decision was made.
The debate, both dockside and internet, has been heated on this subject. There will be a more detailed account in the next issue of North Carolina Sportsman, including a discussion with Greg Dennis.
There is an Opinions and Responses Section in the Fishing and Hunting Reports part of this page. Readers are welcome to use it to express themselves. The January issue, with this story will be in the mail and headed to the news stands in the week before Christmas.
An overlooked aspect of this incident is what an adult bluefin tuna was doing in Archers Creek? Was it sick or had it been feeding and lost its way? It is also worth remembering that several weeks earlier a bluefin tuna beached itself on the Emerald Isle oceanfront only a short distance across the island from where this tuna mysteriously appeared in the creek.
These are fish that traverse the ocean waters across the Atlantic and Mediterranean and return to the same locations at the same times of the year to spawn and feed. Isn’t it curious that two have lost their sense of direction in this general location in such a short period of time?
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