FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: 



Martin County fishers dangle baskets 

 from a bridge to catch herring, 

 participating in a centuries-old tradition. 

 Robin Hall opens the gate at Lock & Dam 

 No. 7, ushering another school of shad 

 to their upstream spawning grounds. 

 Hazel Rountree takes a moment to relax 

 after a long morning of pound-net fishing. 



Since 1995, the MFC has regulated 

 catches of both shad and river herring. 

 Commercial ventures may take shad 

 only from Jan. 1 through April 15, and 

 there is a recreational creel limit of 10 

 fish per person per day. As regulators 

 ponder a fishery management plan for 

 river herring, temporary quotas slash the 

 total allowable catch. The reduced 

 quotas have forced some commercial 

 fishing families out of business. Others, 

 like Herbert Byrum, have diversified 

 into fishing for crab, shrimp or catfish to 

 make a living. 



Last spring, I set out to find some 

 vestige of the fishing culture that used to 

 thrive along North Carolina's eastern 

 rivers. It's mid-March as I leave 

 Wilmington for a tour of three of the 

 state's great fishing rivers: the Cape 

 Fear, the Neuse and the Roanoke. Jim 

 Bahen, a North Carolina Sea Grant 

 fishery specialist, is my intrepid guide. 

 If I'm lucky, I'll get glimpses of the 

 fishery's lucrative past, and perhaps, of 

 hope for the future. 



lock & Dam No. 1, 

 Cape Fear river 



The Cape Fear pours over the dam 

 in a smooth brown curve, foaming white 

 where it meets the lower water down- 

 stream. Bluffs rise on either side of the 

 river. Along one bank, black rings in the 

 grass mark the site of illicit midnight 



bonfires and fresh fish dinners. 



On the river's surface, a safe 

 distance from the tumbling Whitewater, 

 men in bass boats and skiffs work the 

 current with rod and reel or slow-moving 

 drift nets. They're pulling in fat, white 

 American shad, which are bigger than 

 their hickory shad cousins. 



"The net fishermen are happy about 

 the muddy water," says Robin Hall, 

 lockmaster at Lock & Dam No. 1 . "Fish 

 can't see the net, and they swim right 

 into it." 



Hall is popular with fishers, who 

 call him from morning till night to find 

 out how the river is running. He always 

 knows. And thanks to him, many American 

 and hickory shad are running the gauntlet 

 of all those hooks and gill nets to find 

 safe passage upriver through his lock. 



Though boats have floated through 

 the lock since 1915, fish present a greater 

 problem. Shad can't leap over the dam, 

 which rises 1 1 feet above the water — 

 and they don't use the fish ladder. For 

 years, Hall says, most fish pooled at the 

 base of the dam, never reaching their 

 upstream spawning grounds. "They'd 

 swim in through the downstream gate, 

 take one circle around the chamber, and 

 go right out the gate again." 



While U.S. Secretary of the Interior 

 Bruce Babbitt leads a nationwide 

 campaign to blow up unnecessary dams, 

 Hall has taken a less explosive approach. 

 With funding from the Fishery Resource 



Grant program administered by North 

 Carolina Sea Grant, Hall teamed with 

 Mary Moser, a fish biologist formerly at 

 the University of North Carolina at 

 Wilmington, to study the movements of 

 shad through the lock. 



Radio signals from tagged fish 

 confirmed his fears: Hardly any fish 

 made it upstream during his usual 

 locking procedures. But when he 

 changed the arrangement of the gates 

 and the flow of water inside the lock 

 chamber, more fish stayed inside. 



At the dam, we gather under a huge 

 live oak tree to buckle on life preservers 

 before venturing out onto the concrete 

 beside the lock. The water curls far 

 below us, the color of chocolate milk. 



The new method for opening the 

 gates creates a strong current flowing 

 downstream along one side of the lock. 

 Fish enter the lock and swim up the 

 current until they hit the other end of the 

 chamber. After circling back on the 

 "quiet" side of the lock, they enter the 

 current again and repeat the process 

 instead of exiting on the downstream 

 side. I watch the waves, hoping for a 

 glimpse of a fish. 



"There's hardly a ripple if a shad 

 comes up," says Hall. "If there's a 

 splash, it's more than likely a striped 

 bass or blue catfish." But I can't see 

 anything, even with Bahen' s polarized 

 sunglasses. 



C o n t i n u e d 



COASTWATCH 9 



