George Clark, Jr. – A Lifetime of Conservation

September 5, 2024

At our Cape Fear Chapter Banquet in Wilmington last month, we recognized one of our oldest-living CCA NC Life Members, George Clark, Jr., for his lifetime commitment to the conservation of our coastal fisheries. He graciously provided us his story written in 2019 in his own words to describe his observations from a lifetime of fishing on the coast. Here is his story.

I am going to make some observations about marine resources in my area of North Carolina. I am 91 years old, and I have spent all or a part of these years living at Wrightsville Beach. I have lived at the beach year-round for the last seven years and prior to that I lived mainly in Wilmington and a couple of years I lived in Raleigh.

I have been fishing since age six (1934). There are photos of me fishing and catching fish (sand perch) from our oceanfront porch on Charlotte Street. In short, I have been fishing and observing these waters for over 85 years. I have mated on a charter boat (Clara B), surf fished, trolled, plugged, bottom fish, gill netted, crab potted, and raked up clams. Two governors have appointed me to the Marine Fisheries Commission. So, I believe I am at least somewhat qualified to make accurate observations about our marine resources – past and present. I am going to make observations about fresh and saltwater resources, including popeye mullet, menhaden, river herring, shad, spot, striped bass, flounder, and blue claw crabs.

Regarding the “popeye” mullet, for many years there were three long haul seiners on Wrightsville. Walter Stokley, Johnny Mercer, and the Robinsons at Lumina. In the 1940s and 50s, I was on the oceanfront constantly, several years lifeguarding. In late August and September schools of mullet, the size of a football field paraded north to south just beyond the surf. There could be several such schools off the beach at any one time. The ocean was full of mullet. I’m not sure when the town banned netting from the beach, however, until recent years mullet were plentiful. I have many times cast a leaded treble hook from the shore into schools of mullet jerk and snag them with ease. Good bait or a fine meal. These mullet are hugely important as a prime forage fish for about all of the other sport or commercial fish in this area – Spanish and king mackerel, bluefish, cobia, flounder, channel bass, striped bass, and many others. But there are not many mullet left; certainly nothing like the massive schools that used to be.

What happened to the mullet? The only way to harvest mullet is with nets. They are not caught on hook and line. So, if the huge population of mullet has been pretty much decimated it must be done by those who use nets. Almost all netting is done by commercial fishermen. The long-haul netting in Southeastern North Carolina ended many years ago, but I understand it thrives on our Outer Banks. I hate to comment on something I do not know as fact, but now I am going to do just that.

Florida, with over 70% of the voting public passed a constitutional amendment in 1992 that did away with all netting in Florida. This put the long-haul seiners out of business there. I understand that some of them moved their operations to the Outer Banks of our state. Whether or not something like this is the reason we have had a devastating reduction in our mass of mullet, there has been some reason for it, and I feel certain the resource experts employed by our state know exactly the cause. Some corrective action must be taken.

The juvenile mullet we call finger mullet. Not long ago I could go almost anywhere in Banks Channel with a cast net and catch a dozen or so to use as live flounder bait or cut bait for bluefish and drum. They are still around, but much harder to find. And they are, or have been, a staple food for practically all fish. I believe the reduced population of these, and other forage fish, has resulted in a reduced population of the fish that depend on them for food. It’s all related – cause and effect.

And now for the menhaden – the pogey. The king mackerel live bait. Another vital forage fish. They are food for about everything in the ocean, but people don’t eat them. Not sensible people. At one time there were fleets of pogey boats out of Southport and Beaufort. They stunk up the whole area when the menhaden were cooked down for fertilizer. But the netting of menhaden around here has about stopped due to regulations and lack of demand. But the pogey mass is nothing like it used to be. Just a few years ago pods of pogey could be seen flicking the surface of inland waters as well as the ocean. Cast netters seeking live bait could always find pogey, but not anymore. The problem must be over- harvesting by netting in the past because that is the only way they can be caught. Just like the popeye mullet.

River herring. Now that is a fish that is beyond endangered in our State. There simply aren’t any more around here and very few anywhere. In the 1940s and 50s, I had a fifty-foot-long gill net, and I caught all the herring I needed in Town Creek, Toomer’s Creek, and the Northeast Cape Fear River. Several couples would go to Cowpen Landing on the Northeast Cape Fear, launch a jon boat, string out a gill net and catch enough for supper. We scaled ‘em, headed ‘em, and fried ‘em in peanut oil. And after a beer or two ate them. But to tell the truth, it was like eating a French-fried sand spur. When I stopped netting them in about 1960, they were as plentiful as ever. But since then, they have been netted out of existence. Netting is the only way to catch them (like menhaden and mullet) and nets have caught them all. Buy a can of herring in the grocery store – “Product of Canada”.

I used the same size gill net for spot that I used for herring but fished it on the bottom. And I caught all the spot I needed right behind Wrightsville in Banks channel or the waterway. I remember the time when ocean piers would be lined elbow to elbow with fishermen, and women, casting out and reeling in the spot. I have seen off-colored ocean water while trolling, stopped, and heaved out my 6’ cast net and pulled up spot on every cast. They were so thick they stirred up the mud as they moved along. But not anymore. Some spot are still being caught, but nothing like “in the old days”. I’m convinced hook and line fisherman aren’t responsible for this decline. It’s the nets.

Striped bass at one time were plentiful in our rivers and creeks, but not anymore. Some blame this decline on their inability to get beyond the dams on the Cape Fear River to spawn. A very expensive effort has been made to erect a water ladder around Lock and Dam Number One which hasn’t worked very well. That effort surely acknowledges the problem of declining stock and that efforts must be made to solve the problem. But that dam has been in place for about a hundred years, and the decline in striper numbers is much more recent. It is simply a matter of over- harvesting with and without nets.

Then we come to the flounder. The onslaught against the flounder population continues day and night. Inshore and offshore trawlers drag huge nets across the bottom scooping up everything in their path – flounder as well as other fish and marine life which are dismissively referred to as “bycatch”. But whatever it is is dead and dead bycatch is about eight times the volume of flounder caught. Additionally, there are gill nets seemingly set anywhere and everywhere that catch lots of bycatch as well as the targeted flounder. Then there is the gigger who lights up the bottom at night and spears flounder in the face so as not to deface the prized fillet. All of the trawlers and most of the gillnetters and giggers are killing these flounder, which are public property mostly allocated to them by state-employed regulators so they can sell this public property back to the public. That is what commercial fishermen do. As the flounder population gets smaller, which it has, the regulators reduce the allowable catch for hook and line fisherman, making it hardly worth the effort. The regulators are well aware of the steep decline in the flounder population, but they have done nothing of substance to rebuild this population or stop its decline.

And now for the blue claw crab. From my childhood until a couple of years ago anyone could tie a chicken neck or fish head to a length of string, weight it a little and flip it out into a few feet of water, from shore or a pier, and catch a mess of crabs. Those days are gone, hopefully not forever. I have crab potted (a pot being a wire crab trap) from my pier since 1970 and crabs were always plentiful. One pot would catch 25 crabs any night. But that stopped in the Summer of 2017. From April until November, I caught a grand total of two blue claw crabs. During that period, and earlier, commercial crab pots were everywhere. They caught them all! Before that devastation, I could count at least a dozen commercial pots across the channel from my pier. Now there are none. They know there are no crabs left, and so do I. There is zero regulation to remedy this problem or any effort to rehab the crab population. I have brought this problem to the attention of the Marine Fisheries Commission staff without even the courtesy of a response.

All of the observations I have described are eyewitness accounts; things I would swear to in court under oath. And I truly believe that few of the experts who have studied my topics will take great exception to the accuracy of my observations. So, what happens? Does anybody do anything to turn things around? The solutions are pretty simple, but North Carolinians from the mountains to the sea must become aware of the continuing devastation of their marine resources before they will demand these solutions.