THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, October 15, 1994             TAG: 9410150228
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   51 lines

STATE GROUP SUPPORTS EASING FLOUNDER RULES THE RECREATIONAL SEASON IS SET TO END NOV. 1, BUT THE STATE WANTS IT EXTENDED.

Flounder fishermen who want a few extra weeks to fish this year will get support from an unlikely place when state fisheries regulators go before a compact of Atlantic Coast states seeking changes in rules governing summer flounder.

The N.C. Fisheries Association, a 42-year-old commercial fishing trade group, will back the state's effort on behalf of its sports fishermen, reversing recent combative attitudes between commercial and sportfishing interests.

At a meeting of its board of directors in New Bern Thursday night, the association voted unanimously to back state efforts to lift the closure of the recreational season, set for Nov. 1.

The issue is scheduled to be discussed at a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission next week in Delaware.

``My board instructed me to do whatever I can to aid our state's recreational flounder fishermen, and I intend to do just that,'' said Jerry Schill, executive director of the fisheries association. ``The closure is simply to make life easier for some bureaucratic number-crunchers gathering statistics.

``That's simply not fair to the recreational flounder fishermen or to the travel and tourism industries on the Outer Banks,'' he said.

State fisheries regulators want to extend the season for recreational anglers to catch the popular food fish until Dec. 31.

It's a move that would benefit not only the sports fishermen but the tackle shops and fishing piers who cater to these fishermen who flock to the waters off the southern end of Hatteras Island, where summer flounder concentrate in November and December.

It's also a move that led Schill earlier this week to charge that Robert V. Lucas, chairman of the state Marine Fisheries Commission, is being unfair to commercial fishermen whose requests for regulatory relief have gone largely ignored.

At the fisheries association board meeting, attended by Lucas, some association members said the current ASMFC plan for managing flounder was unfair to commercial fishermen because it imposed a smaller size limit on flounder caught by commercial fishermen than by recreational fishermen.

In an interview after the meeting, Lucas said he was pleased with the fisheries association's action. by CNB