THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503230158
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 19 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Tight Lines
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
After almost nine years, this will be my last fishing column.
I must admit that when I started writing about fishing in the first issue of The Carolina Coast in 1986, I did not expect it to last this long.
It has been a good run and I thank the readers who have allowed me to keep speaking my mind on the subject for so long.
I have probably repeated myself too often, badgered you too frequently about catch and release and devoted too much space to bluefish, my favorite of all the things that swim in the ocean.
Forgive me for those things. They were mistakes borne of passion.
I have never considered myself an expert on any aspect of fishing. I'm not even in the same ballpark with Lefty Kreh, Mark Sosin or Bob Hutchinson. But I do know something that the experts occasionally forget.
If I have a continuing philosophy about fishing, it is that it ought to be fun. Most of us fish for recreation, but too often it becomes an intense, almost grim endeavor. We get too competitive and let a lack of catching spoil our fishing.
I have tried to make this column reflect the joy that I get from fishing and hoped that perhaps a little of it might spill over to those who read it.
Over the years, I have seen surf fishing become more and more popular as the advent of the sports utility vehicle as a family car has allowed more and more people to tool along the beach.
I have grumbled about that from time to time, as the crowds at Cape Point and Oregon Inlet grew ever more dense. Where, oh where, I have wondered, do all of those people come from?
But I will say now that I didn't mean it.
Surf fishing is the great salt water sport for everyone. You needn't own a boat to surf fish and you don't have to have the pocketful of money that a charter trip costs these days.
If you don't mind walking a little, you don't even need a beach buggy. And yet, you might catch a citation bluefish or enough flounder to feed the neighborhood within sight of your car in the parking lot.
We all tend to complain about how much better things used to be, when there were more fish and fewer people. But the Outer Banks remains one of the great fishing spots in all the world and all of us who get to wet a line here should be grateful.
I leave you now with the hope that you will enjoy fishing, that you will behave yourselves when there is a crowd and that you will release alive any and every fish that you do not intend to eat.
Good luck and tight lines to one and all. by CNB