"I was just going out to catch some fish," he said from his home in Newport. "I didn't catch anything."

In a way, though, he did.

He "caught" about 28 drum and bluefish and two undersized flounder.

He caught them on video, rotting in an unattended gill net set for flounder near Morehead City.

"I was in the Haystacks, poling around and went down a narrow creek, and this mud flat barricaded the creek I was trying to get to," he said. "I looked up and saw the net. My first thought was revulsion. Then I thought I better do something about it."

That's when he dropped his push pole, grabbed his video camera and recorded the waste.

He and other anglers are saying that this is one of the worst years they've seen for gill netting in their area, and they fear the nets are taking a heavy toll on game fish, particularly red drum.

Churchill, 42, a physical education teacher and coach at Morehead City Middle School, has long been an opponent of entanglement (gill) nets in sound waters.

The issue of netting in the sound pits a minority of commercial gill netfisherman against a majority of recreational hook-and-line fishermen, each with a stake in the fish. Commercial fishermen, many of whom are part-timers, are trying to make money. Recreational fishermen, who fish for fun, decry the "bycatch" (non-targeted species caught) that sometimes results from the use of gill nets. Throw in the fact that recreational anglers also can be licensed to use gill nets, and you have trouble in the sound.

The problem with gill nets is that they catch indiscriminately, and what netters can't legally keep is returned to the water -- alive or dead. The dead bycatch is the bane of recreational anglers and guides. Churchill and other anglers say they fear the impact on coastal fish stocks. Professional guides -- also commercial anglers of a sort -- need sport fish for revenue.

Using Churchill's video to identify the net owner, Marine Patrol officer Mitch Stone, with the Division of Marine Fisheries, cited Virginia Dare Fulcher Oglesby of Morehead City for using a gill net without proper buoys or identification. The buoys were not the right color, and they were marked by outdated registration numbers, according to a DMF news release.

Oglesby also was cited with "leaving a gill net in coastal fishing waters when such devices contained edible species of fish unfit for human consumption."

Efforts to contact Olglesby for comment were unsuccessful.

The citation carried a fine of $35 and court costs of $110.

Churchill isn't the only angler fed up with nets. Rick Patterson, 36, a part-time guide from Cape Carteret, says he thinks they're hurting the red drum.

" 'Problem' ain't the word for it," he said. "Last year was a banner year for redfish in the Newport River. Last year, I could go out with a client for four hours and average 15 or 20 redfish. This year, it's four to six."

Patterson said he doesn't see many recreational nets, almost all commercial nets. He also cited three factors for the increased netting in Bogue Sound and surrounding areas: poor blue crab catches, higher flounder prices and a regulation that requires recreational fishermen to tend gill nets at all times south of Carteret County to the South Carolina line.

Although red drum are incidental bycatch, flounder netters are allowed to keep seven drum per trip if the amount doesn't exceed 50 percent of the trip poundage. The rest go back dead or alive. The recreational limit on drum is one fish per day 18 to 27 inches long.

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