Anyone hearing anything about a fall season opening back up?

I read about it somewhere yesterday, its was sorta vague about the dates it would open.

Yep, and it's not good for next years TAC but a lot of moaning was done when the season was shortened. My best guess is the season will be around fifteen days next year if this goes through. I have three weeks to book next years bait purchase and it's going to be a tough decision. And to add insult to injury, Florida could be getting a large part of our quota due to the amount of coast line they have.

I just read about that John.. we might be lucky to have a season at all next year..

I vacationed in NC near Wilmington this summer. Chartered a boat for me and the kiddos to go bottom fishing. Capt told us Red snapper season was only 4 days long in 2020, and it was the weekend before we arrived. We had lines in the water for about 5 hours and caught plenty of fish, but only 6 RSs.

Drop a line in the gulf and tell me why they are endangered

Just food for thought. I'm not saying any of it's right. I suppose my point is that it could always be worse. I'm digging the idea of a fall season... maybe a chance for a few keeper size off the kayak this fall.

The only thing that has ever been endangered about Red Snapper was the profits of the commercial boys.They don't want those pesky recreational guys catching too many of their fish.

^^^winner winner chicken dinner. All about the profits for the commercial boys and the tax revenue associated with them selling to the fish houses and the fish houses selling to the end users. $$$$ to the govt.

Cant have people catching their own and taking them home to eat if they want fresh fish. I've never had to pay sales tax on any fish I've cuaght and that right there is the reason.

What's a snapper season??

They shut ours down today here in Louisiana.

I might piss off some commercial fishermen but the fish are a public resource. My opinion is if I buy a saltwater license and now reef permit I should be able to catch a reasonable poundage, period. Set a lengthy season, excluding the spawning season, so us recreational guys have a chance to fish. The assholes that have snapper quota, (commercial) that do not fish but sell their quota, lose it. Divide up the quota amount equally among recreational and remaining commercial fishermen. Google kingpins of the gulf. Interesting read that will piss you off. Wrong that people are making money off a public resource such as game fish by selling rights to that fish. Just my 2 cents. Season was cut short this year. Guess who ain't eating fresh snapper this year..........

David

It's all about the Benjamins, Dave, all about the Benjamins.

David I learned a lot about these kingpins during the oil spill from someone that is a lawyer. They have the power in Washington and all the money on the Gulf Coast.

Question. How many of you snapper fished on your own, not by charter up until the mid '90's when there were very few around?

How can someone own a part of the quota, which is a public resource, and sell their shares without ever putting their boat in the waters? If they're allocated so many pounds of fish they should be required to actually fish instead of just making $$$ from brokering their shares.

My granddad did on his boat in the late 80’s and 90’s. He ran charters but he worked on his own private wrecks and numbers. On a LORAN at that.

We did too. I’ve been red snapper fishing since the seventies but only started fishing off of Alabama’s Coast for the past ten years. I don’t remember having a shortage but my daddy and uncle’s used to say the resource wasn’t properly managed back then.

I've snapper fished since the late 70's. Never had a problem catching snapper. Just never fished the public wrecks and community hole natural bottom spots and never had a problem finding or catching fish. We always fished stuff that we put out or that Eglin shot down. There are 50 times the number of boats fishing now as there were then and there are still so many snapper in the gulf that it makes it hard to get a bait down through them, if you're targeting other species. Tell me this. What was the total tonnage of snapper taken by the commercial boys back in the 70s and 80s? I'm pretty sure that if the research is done, the commercial harvest is probably up 400-500% as compared to the 70s and 80s and the recreational harvest is probably limited to being about the same or maybe even less than it was back then. (way less boats but the season was year round). It's like everythng else. Way over-regulated to make it easy for the lazy people so they can go to any public number and catch two 20" fish. Like others have said, it is not about managing the resource, it is 100% about the $$$$.

It really wasn't worth targeting red snapper before the regulations. We used to trailer our boat to Ft Morgan and fish natural bottom out of there if we wanted to catch a red snapper big enough to keep. Unless you had good private numbers well offshore, you never saw a keeper red snapper out of Pensacola back before they were regulated.