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More anglers spending more money

the state's coastal counties.
The survey also shows that saltwater fishing attracts many visitors to the N.C. coast. Forty-five percent of those who fished in the state's saltwater were non-residents. That puts North Carolina eighth among the country's 23 coastal states in attracting visiting fishermen.
Some other tidbits: Flounder, halibut and other flatfish were the most popular species, attracting 2.6 million fishermen on 29 million days. Bluefish, seatrout, mackerel and striped bass were other favorite species.
The typical saltwater fisherman, according to the statistics, is a 35- to 54-year-old white guy, who lives in a city or town somewhere in the Southeast, has attended at least one year of college and makes more $50,000 a year.
The National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation was first done in 1955 and is the oldest and most reliable recreation survey in the country. Trends show that since 1955 the number of anglers, both salt and fresh water, increased at more than twice the rate of the U.S. population growth.

More than three-quarters of a million saltwater anglers fished more than 5 million days in North Carolina in 1996, according to a recently released national survey.
The survey, done every five years by the U.S. Department of the Interior, found that 9.4 million anglers nationwide went on 87 million saltwater fishing trips totaling 103 million days. The number of saltwater fisherman remained essentilly unchanged since 1991, when the last survey was done, but the number of fishing days increased almost 43 percent.
That recreational saltwater fishing is a big business is abundantly clear in the numbers. Saltwater fishermen in 1996 spent more than $8.1 billion nationwide. Much of the money --  $4.6 billion -- was spent on trip-related costs, such as food and lodging, and $3.4 billion on rods, reels, boats and other equipment. On average, fishermen took 9 saltwater-fishing trips, lasting 11 days each, in 1996. They spent $45 a day on each trip.
Comparable numbers weren't calculated for each state, but using the national averages gives us some idea of how much recreational saltwater fishing is worth to North Carolina's economy. Those 770,000 saltwater fishermen in North Carolina in 1996 fished about 5.7 million days. If each spent $45 a day, the fishermen generated more than $256 million. Much of that was spent in

Source: 1996 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation