NCCHARTERFISHING-Capt.'s Jeff Cronk and MIke Taylor-Crystal Coast, Swansboro, Emerald Isle

July 2nd, Today I had Mike Mulchi and his friend onboard for an early morning trip. These boys wanted to search for some flounder and we began by working boat docks in the area and also spent a little time drifting some channels near the inlet. We wound up catching a mess of flounder but released about 10 from 14.5 to 15.25in to be caught up in nets. Fortunately we got into a school of reds along some boat docks today as well as speckled trout to mix things up. Regarding the flounder...I don't mind a min. size of 15.5in. but it's a problem when the marine fisheries thinks that a 15.5in size limit on recreationals will increase the overall size of our flounder when we are releasing these flounder around 1000's of yards of gillnet and the commercial size is still 14in. With this rule we might as well just gut every flounder between 14 and 15.5in. prior to tossing back.... it's really ashame this state can't properly manage a species. I would have rather seen a recreational size limit that matches the commercial size limit and drop our creel limit from 8 to 5.
Capt. Jeff Cronk
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