ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604300008
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
The vast salt marshes that stretch lazily in an eastward direction from the mainland of Virginia's Eastern Shore have an honored reputation as the early-season spot to fish for flounder.
As the water temperatures ease upward in April, flounder - some of them as large as doormats - move from the ocean into tidal creeks and channels that are surrounded by huge expanses of greening cordgrass. The ebony water is rich with food for sport fish.
``You open the feed gates and turn the switch on,'' said Lewis Gillingham, of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.
The switch has been a bit sluggish this spring, even though a decent flounder season is predicted. The late spring has kept the water temperature down, and strong winds have been nearly an everyday occurrence, said Randolph Lewis, who operates Wachapreague Marina. But the season is young, and it already has produced a couple of 5- and 6-pounders, he said.
There was a time when anglers could launch from villages with quaint names - Chincoteauge, Wachapreague, Quinby, Willis Wharf, Oyster - and expect to catch 60 to 100 keeper flounder on a good day. And good days were abundant. Citation catches in the Virginia Salt Water Fishing Tournament passed the 1,000 mark one year.
Then, in the late 1980s, a crash came. Anglers were taking less than 10 percent of the fish they were catching in the '60s, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported. Citations plunged to 25 in 1989, ``which was the lowest total in the history of the tournament,'' said Claude Bain, director of the 40-year-old event. ``It was just hard to go out and catch a flounder - period.''
That has changed. While it is nothing like the ``good old days,'' anglers can take delight in the fact that flounder fishing slowly is returning to the seaside of Eastern Shore and to the Chesapeake Bay. There were 26 citations in 1990; 31 in 1991; 29 in 1992; 68 in 1993; 107 in 1994; 154 last year. What's more, there is a chance it will get better.
Bain believes restrictions on flounder fishing, for sport and commercial fishermen, are responsible for the turnaround.
``The mere fact that we have had some regulations in place with minimum-size limits and the fact that there have been restrictions put on the trawl-boat catches have enabled what we see right now to occur,'' he said. ``As long as we continue to keep the regs we have in place, I think we will continue to see the population slowly rebuilding the next few years.''
Virginia was one of the first states to do something about the flounder decline that has occurred along the East Coast. In 1989, the state imposed a 10-fish daily catch limit and a 13-inch minimum size for recreational fishermen. Commercial fishermen were given a 13-inch minimum size, and trawling for flounder - scraping the bottom with a net - was banned.
In the early '90s, the regulations became even more restrictive: eight per day of 14 inches or more for recreational fishermen. That's the current limit.
``What we are seeing, the average size is increasing and the numbers are holding pretty steady in terms of what you can catch in a day's fishing,'' said Bain.
The charter-boat business is beginning to rebuild, and private boats are returning, said Lewis, but nothing like the old days when it could be tough to find a spot to park along the tree-lined streets of Wachapreague.
Charters are getting about $350 per trip this season, and their captains have other jobs to supplement their income, said Lewis.
``There was a lot of concern that the restrictive bag limit would severely limit the number of people who would be willing to come down to fish,'' said Bain. ``But when the fishery started coming back, the number of people willing to charter and trailer their boats down here picked right up.''
In many instances, the water is sheltered enough that mountain anglers with bass boats and center-consoles rigs can trailer their craft and cast for flounder. You don't need a yacht.
The flounder will spend a couple of months in the Eastern Shore shallows, then move to deeper water. The early-season fishing technique is to drift a two-hook bottom rig baited with a squid or minnow.
``Flounder are predators,'' Bain said. ``They are not the docile things that just lay on the bottom that everybody thinks they are. When they want to get something, they can maintain a really fast swimming speed for short distances. They are always ready to feed.''
Bain doesn't anticipate the flounder will return to its earlier days of glory, when Wachapreague proudly called itself ``The Flounder Capital of the World.''
``I don't see that,'' he said. ``I would like to see the day when I can come out here and catch a limit of fish - whatever that limit is - and it will include a couple of 3-, 31/2- and 4-pound fish. It is real tough to catch the bigger fish now, whereas 12 or 15 years ago that was typical. Those fish now are mostly missing from the population.''
But as spring gives rebirth to the salt marshes, there is renewed hope that the flounder population will continue to build, and there will be decent weather to fish for them.
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Claude Bain, director of the 40-year-old Virginia Saltby CNBWater Fishing Tournament, takes a flounder off the Eastern Shore.
color. GRAPHIC: Map by ROBERT LUNSFORD/Staff: Eighty miles of
flounder fishing on the Eastern Shore. color.