that the angling community seems to 

 be increasingly receptive to informa- 

 tion and educational efforts to help 

 them do the right thing," Schmied 

 says. 



Nowell says he's seen the same 

 evolution in North Carolina. 



"I'm impressed to see fishermen 

 on the beach catching big fish and 

 releasing them," he says. "To some 

 extent, it's the future of fishing. But 

 more than that, it's the right thing to 

 do." 



Tournaments are also riding the 

 tide of conservatism. Although some 

 billfish contests with prizes and 

 enormous cash pools still call for the 

 prizewinning catch to be killed, many 

 North Carolina tournaments are 

 promoting catch-and-release. They 

 document the catch using onboard 

 observers, measuring boards and 

 Polaroid cameras, or they use the 

 honor system. 



Part of the change is due to an 

 enlightened view of fishing and 



By their actions, fishermen 

 either improve or damage 

 the status of the stocks. 

 Releasing them with 

 catch-and-release skills 

 and researching their 

 populations are the best way 

 to restore their numbers. 



attention to public relations; part is 

 necessity when quotas have been met 

 in a particular fishery. But either way, 

 catch-and-release tournaments plant 

 the seed of conservation in the mind of 

 anglers and onlookers, says Murray of 

 Sea Grant. 



"The movement in the last 10 years 

 was led in part by the sportfishing 

 community to become more conserva- 



tion-minded," Murray says. "The 

 days of the old marlin tournaments, 

 back 15 years ago, when they'd kill 

 the fish, bring it in, take a picture and 

 throw it in the dumpster, are gone." 



King mackerel tournaments, for 

 their part, have raised the minimum 

 size limits to 28 inches, and some- 

 times 30 inches, Nowell says. The 

 federal regulation is 20 inches. And 

 aggregate prizes — rewarding the 

 angler who hooked the five largest 

 and heaviest fish — are a thing of 

 the past. 



This year, Wilmington will host 

 the nation's only tag-and-release king 

 mackerel tournament, sponsored by 

 the ACCA-NC, says Kurt Fickling, 

 past president of the ACCA-NC and 

 tournament organizer. The May 22 

 contest will be an honor tournament 

 with 150 boats fishing and no prizes 

 — just prestige. 



"All (other) king mackerel 

 tournaments are based on the largest 

 fish," says Fickling. "So if you catch 



1 2 MARC HI APRIL 1993 



