I have a feeling that were really going to get screwed this year on the red snapper season. It could be as little as 20 days I'm hearing. It will start June 1st so if any of y'all have a group you want to take I suggest getting in on the first couple of weeks. Hey y'all click on the link here and check out my website.
www.orangebeachfish.com

I thought we got a longer season this year captain?

Dang I have a beach trip planned the 21st through 25th. That would suck

me too

Ok right now its 40 days. Last week the NMFS lost a major lawsuit against the commercial fishermen. The lawsuit basically claimed that the NMFS has lagged on getting the recreational fishermen on an accountable fish management plan and because of the NMFS mismanagement of the fishery the recreational side has over caught the quota for 6 of the last 7 years, most years over a million pounds, the only year they didn't was the 2010 oil spill year. Now this forces the NMFS to come up with an accountable fish management plan that doesn't go over on quota, or risk getting sued again and losing again, this is going to take some time, maybe we will have something in place by next year hopefully. Until then I expect the NMFS to increase the "buffers" on what were allowed to catch which will in turn cost us many days of season. I really see them going to a 15 to 20 day summer season then count the fish and then have a small fall season. This lawsuit is both a good and bad thing for us. In the short term its going to suck, but in the long term it will force them to actually change the way the manage the fishery and how they count the fish, right now its all a bull shucks survey, along with dock intercepts all bunched into some kind of formula. We need mandatory counting of every red snapper that comes out of the gulf.

The dockside surveys and intercepts are very, very accurate. There have NEVER EVER been enough of them done but they are VERY ACCURATE. But The more you expand those accurate numbers by ESTIMATING how many snapper and what size the fish were that were caught by fisherman WHO WERE NOT SURVEYED...the worse the Guesstimate becomes. HOWEVER...when the MANAGERS get hold of the data it gets twisted beyond belief.
The infamous MRFSS survey was never intended to be used in this way. It was only to ever be used for trend data and not to accurately measure the total catch of any species.
To get it right...as FAIRWATER said we need mandatory reporting of every red snapper. There are ways to do it!

They basically already have a number and a average weight that we catch everyday and its way higher of course on Saturdays. I believe that they do the dock checks and surveys to just go along with it. So really it does not count for weather days at all. Its piss poor at best. The red snapper pie is cut very thin these days and the way they estimate the catch is crazy. They don't even have any idea who or how many people are fishing for red snapper and there is no way they could ever tell me how many fish I caught on the Fairwater, I would like to know really since I'm certified for 18 people but we average fishing around 10. The commercial guys have it going on with there IFQ (Individual fish quota) they count every fish and can fish anytime they want all year until there quota is reached. This type system would not ever work for the true boat owning public but it would work fine on the charter boats. Hate to say it but the only thing I see truly working for the true recreational guys is fish tags. I am very sick and tired of them telling us what we caught in a week where theres a hurricane in the gulf and no one fishes. Things must change.

I feel like I'm at work again...