We are just hours away from the first day of the 2026 flounder fishing season, lasting only 14 days.
Thanks to a management plan, the Department of Marine Fisheries is seeing population growth again in flounder.
We got a closer look at how the research is conducted and how the flounder population is beginning to increase.
Flounder season is highly anticipated for anglers throughout our state.
This fish was confiscated by our marine patrol officers.
Amanda Mycek runs the Marine Fisheries Carcass Collection Program.
So that was a really mature female, meaning she would have been really good at producing offspring and laying lots of eggs.
Mycek gave me a closer look into the research they do at the Department of Marine Fisheries here in Morehead City.
So the ear bones are what we’re going to use to determine the age of the fish. So each year the fish is going to lay down growth rings, just like the rings of the tree if you were to cut a tree down.
In 2019, a flounder stock assessment determined flounder were overfished and the population was depleting.
According to research conducted by the Department of Marine Fisheries, officials have seen growth since adopting the Southern Flounder Fishery Management Plan.
Last year an angler donated to the carcass collection program, and that fish ended up being 12 years old, which expanded the known and documented age of southern flounder from 9 years up to 12 years.
This year, the department is again asking for donations of flounder carcasses so it can continue to track the slowly but surely increasing flounder population.
In supporting programs like this and by donating your catch, you can actually make a really big difference. Your donations do matter, they do make a difference, and we’re gonna keep working to make this better for everybody.