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Get Ready For Moonlight Fishing On the Flagler Beach Pier, Starting in September

July 25, 2014 | FlaglerLive | 10 Comments

Moonlight fishing is coming to the Flagler Beach pier. (chrisdupe)
Moonlight fishing is coming to the Flagler Beach pier. (chrisdupe)

The Flagler Beach pier’s balance sheet is struggling this year, with a $23,000 deficit the city government–which administers the pier–is trying to close before the end of the year. One idea: starting the first Saturday in September (Sept. 6), the pier will be open to fishing through the night, but for a $6 charge–the same rate fishermen must pay during the day.

The pier is open 365 days a year from 6 a.m. to midnight. Occasional walkers pay $1.50 for a day pass. Fishermen pay $6. An annual pass is $100.

“A lot of fishermen, they love to fish when there’s a full moon,” Flagler Beach City Manager Bruce Camplell said. “I’m not sure that’s something I’d want to do but if they want to do that’s great.”

The idea isn’t Campbell’s, but that of Robert Beams, the bait and tackle shop attendant better known as Beamer. He approached Campbell a couple of weeks ago and laid out the plan. It fit right in with the city’s push for more revenue. Or fresh ideas.


The city had budgeted $351,000 in revenue from its pier operations this year. The operations include pier visits and the bait and tackle shop. But two things have hurt revenue. In June, the city wrote a $141,000 pier insurance check, increasing that cost from $80,000 because the city didn’t want to be self-insured at 50 percent. The higher cost lowered the self-insurance ratio to 25 percent. “I warned you of this back in our mid-term review that that was going to happen, because we paid that big lump of insurance back in June,” Campbell told city commissioners Thursday evening.  “We of course consciously made that decision last year, we wanted to get away from being 50 percent self-insured and increase that. We will close that gap, we’ve got three months to close it.”

Yet revenue on the pier is down 14 percent this year: to date, the pier has generated $213,600. Annualized, that would leave the pier fund with a $30,000 deficit at the end of the year. The city intends to spruce up its bait shop, revamp its t-shirts, and come up with new ideas to generate dollars. Moonlight fishing is one of those.

“I think it’s something we should try,” Campbell said. “I don’t know how many people we’ll have, we’ll find out if it’s worthwhile or not. But this is another one of those things which we’re trying to throw against the wall. This is an idea that staff came up with, it’s not my idea, and I think it’s a fun thing to try and there’s really no risk.”

Commissioners asked about safety and police presence. The city manager doesn’t see much of an issue there, saying  “there’s not a whole lot of unusual heavy lifting” during overnight hours, but that the police department would be aware of the fishing and likely provide a nearby presence when necessary. Campbell is not wanting to start the midnight fishing before September to have time to advertise the new access. The pier will close at midnight that night, for five minutes, so it can be cleared of people, then re-open for those who want to pay the overnight $6 fee and fish on.

Campbell stressed in an interview this morning that the so-called deficit masks a much brighter picture overall. The pier, before the city took over the bait and tackle shop three years ago, perpetually ran a $100,000 deficit every year. That’s no longer the case, Campbell said: it runs a profit, which only this year was dented by the big insurance expense. “We’ve swung from a $100,000 loss to being on the plus side” every year, Campbell said, “so with the change we’ve made we’re still $60,000 on the plus side.” At least in the long run.

“The pier fund has been good for us, the guys have done a good job there for us,” Campbell said, “and hopefully come the end of the year, hopefully we’ll be able to sneak out a bit of a plus side and certainly erase the results of that big check we wrote in June.”

Moonlight fishing is not exactly a craze across the country, but it’s offered in a few places. In Los Angeles County, for example, moonlight fishing is offered at the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale, Calif., for $10 per person the first Friday of every month.

Midnight Fishing

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Flounder Fred says

    July 25, 2014 at 12:12 pm

    Oh yea….Let’s all run out and fish on the pier at night with all the drunks and druggies. No Thanks, I wait till morning.

    Reply
  2. Howard Beale says

    July 25, 2014 at 1:48 pm

    Any talk of legal skinny dipping under the flagler moon?
    The heck with fishing.

    Reply
  3. bluefish says

    July 25, 2014 at 2:21 pm

    I don’t think this idea is going to fly. First, the fishing rate is too expensive to begin with for such a short pier with little amenities — no power outlets, covered seating etc. Second, if I am fishing there already and then asked to pay an additional $6 to stay overnight? That is crazy. $6 just to get on the pier to fish one time is too much.

    St. Aug Beach pier is ONLY $1.50 for St. Johns County residents & ONLY $3.00 for non residents to fish and it is a much longer pier with covered seating! Vilano Beach pier is FREE with power and nice covered tables & seating!

    Sorry, but I think the Flagler Beach pier is way over priced! At the very least, there should be a discount for county residents!

    Reply
  4. Anonymous says

    July 25, 2014 at 3:03 pm

    Flagler should have installed a roll away pier. Whenever a hurricane or major storm threatened, they just roll the pier in on the beach. Simple!

    Reply
  5. Shelia says

    July 25, 2014 at 3:08 pm

    I don’t understand why you have to close the pier at 12 and then reopen and charge people. What a RIP OFF! Why not $6 for fishing no matter what time it is. You keep trying to do things to bring people to the beach, but you keep ripping them off.

    Reply
    • Genie says

      July 26, 2014 at 10:04 am

      Good comment, Sheila. When I was a little girl I used to fish by the light of the moon with my dad and my uncle. LOVED IT!

      Reply
  6. Seminole Pride says

    July 25, 2014 at 4:18 pm

    Bring back Shark fishing.

    Reply
  7. Pier Angler says

    July 26, 2014 at 8:30 am

    What about people with passes are they going to have to pack up and leave for five minutes? Why not just go back to the way it was in the 1990’s when the pier was open 24 hrs and you only paid once for 24 hrs of fishing. Back then the Flagler Beach P.D. walked out from time to time to make sure everything was ok.
    If you want to make more money on the pier take it back out to 1000 feet and build a bigger “T” that would bring in more dedicated fisher people.

    What is a roll away pier?????? Are they SAFE?????

    Reply
  8. Sherry Epley says

    July 31, 2014 at 3:33 am

    A TAX by any other name. . . the pier should be FREE! It would bring more people into the restaurants and shops. We should be trying to expand the business in our town instead of pinching pennies from everyone.

    Reply
  9. Armyd says

    April 2, 2015 at 1:45 pm

    GIVE US SHARK FISHING!!

    Reply
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