254 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



By 1946 Wedgeport had fifteen angling boats, fifteen captains, thirty- 

 guides, a guides association, an anghng club, a good dock with attested scales, 

 a hotel, and much excellent publicity. In this year, 1949, Wedgeport is build- 

 ing more boats; has three hotels and several private tourist homes, and Roy 

 Cann of the Yarmouth office of the Nova Scotia Bureau of Information wires 

 me that the "angling last season aided the community to extent of about one 

 hundred thousand dollars." The International Matches this September in 

 Wedgeport will bring teams from the United States, Great Britain, Cuba, 

 Argentina, and Brazil, with a crowd of anglers from other sections who have 

 come along as audience or press or to try their luck independently. This, it 

 must be remembered, was a very small community with no tourist trade of 

 any sort, for the most part not on maps, not on a railroad, chiefly French- 

 speaking but in no way "quaint," and without bathing beaches or any other 

 possible attraction for visitors. It had only the fish and, after its initial push, 

 the enormous and concerted will to become the famous tuna fishing grounds 

 it now is. In the case of Wedgeport, the information and publicity service 

 goes on without pause, and this is extremely necessary. I have in mind two 

 other small communities, perhaps in themselves more potentially attractive 

 to tourists, where fish are even more plentiful and the season longer, but 

 where no information service was maintained, and no concerted effort made. 

 Eventually what visitors' accommodations had been available were closed; 

 their few boats were taken elsewhere. The fish are still there but only very 

 seldom is an angler able to afford the luxury of a yacht there on which he can 

 live and from which he can fish. 



North Carolina, with her beautiful long coast line; with fresh-water fish- 

 ing, salt-water fishing, and bathing so close together; with a good all year 

 round climate, a long fishing season, and good hotels and inns, should surely 

 be able to attract increasing numbers of anglers from those who fish from 

 piers to those who try for marlin off Hatteras. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISCUSSION 



Off nearly the full length of North Carolina's coast, and separated from it 

 by sounds, are long, low "banks" of sand. The sounds communicate with the 

 ocean through other sounds or through inlets. 



Currituck, the most northern sound, is fresh, and Albemarle into which it 

 discharges is nearly fresh water. Roanoke and Croatan sounds are separated 

 by Roanoke Island. Pamlico Sound, into which these four others discharge, 

 is separated from the ocean by Hatteras and Ocracoke islands which are 

 broken by Oregon, New, Hatteras, and Ocracoke inlets. To the south of 

 Pamlico Sound is Core Sound running south to Beaufort, where Bogue Sound 

 begins. There are numerous smaller sounds to the south. 



