A renovation expected to begin next year at the 67-year-old Bobby N. Setzer Fish Hatchery in Brevard will diminish upcoming trout stockings in local rivers by two-thirds. However, the effect that renovation could have on tourism and businesses that rely on anglers is difficult to determine.
“However, with last year’s passage of [the] Outdoor Heritage Enhanced [law], our legislature created a very real problem for nonhunters who have relied on Sundays as a free and clear day to go where they please on our public lands, in particular our national forests.”
In November, North Carolina voters will choose whether to add the right to hunt, fish and harvest wildlife to their constitution. If the amendment passes, the state will join 21 others, including all of the South save Florida, Maryland and West Virginia, in explicitly affirming this right.
In “Go Fish,” Mackensy Lunsford shows that it can take a good deal of effort to identify so-called environmentally friendly seafood choices [July 20 Xpress]. Yet it’s much more difficult than she noted. Scientists using DNA technology recently revealed that 20 to 25 percent of seafood products are fraudulently labeled, with the rates of fraud […]
Do you like eating trout, drum and stripers? The vast majority of North Carolinians are about to lose their freedom to eat three of the most popular and delicious fish that grace this beautiful state’s waters. A small handful of rich elitists want our politicians to list the speckled trout, red drum and striped bass […]
Local family has magic touch when it comes to catching record-breaking salmon in North Carolina.
It may take awhile, but neophytes eventually figure out where to go fishing locally. Over time, fisherfolk generally find each other and exchange information, but establishing such a network doesn’t happen overnight, and it does take some work. You spot a Trout Unlimited bumper sticker on somebody’s truck and strike up a conversation in a […]
It’s time for the May 9 French Broad River Fins & Gills Classic Fishing Tournament. Sponsored by Clear Channel Radio of Asheville and Asheville Outdoor Center, the event benefits local nonprofit RiverLink in its mission to protect and restore the French Broad River and its watershed as a place to live, work and play!
I was in seventh grade when I caught my first trout on a fly, using a royal coachman. Lee Wulff, the warrior god of modern fly-fishing, improved on this classic pattern, substituting hair for wings and tail (to make it more buoyant, durable and easier to see in rough water) and dubbing it the royal […]
Back in the late 1960s, a new trend arose in fly fishing that was known as “matching the hatch.” A hatch is the specific point where the larval form of an aquatic insect rises to the water’s surface (referred to as “emerging”), shucks its outer shell and metamorphoses into a flying insect. Check your fly: […]
The biggest trout I’ve ever caught on a fly rod was snared with an outfit that cost me $20 at the local pawnshop. It’s a 7-foot rod with a cheap reel, and it came with a weight-forward line—all of which probably didn’t cost more than $60 when it was new. The rod is so cheap […]
A couple of years ago, I spent about three months restoring the exteriors of the two log cabins at the President James K. Polk State Historic Site, just south of Charlotte. The site is in an urban area, and Little Sugar Creek, a nondescript stream about the size of the Swannanoa, runs adjacent the property. […]
When I was in fourth grade, my father gave me my first fly rod: a 9.5 foot, 7-weight Wright & McGill split bamboo. Along with this came a reed creel and a pair of hip boots. I don’t remember my initial reaction to the rod or creel, but I was head over heels with the […]
That’s how we do it in North Carolina: A Wilkes County man landed a state-record catfish on his granddaughter’s Barbie Doll fishing pole.
