Say goodbye to red snapper season

You may recall last year we had a supplemental fall recreational red snapper season. Commercial red snapper entities (groups that catch fish for sale; charter boats are included in recreational) sued over this, claiming that the latest science suggested the recreational sector already caught its quota. The court sided with the commercial fishermen. As a result of this ruling, the current proposed recreational snapper season for 2014 is 11 days.

Something has to change, or the NMFS and commercial interests are going to shut us out of this fishery altogether.

I guess they think that everybody but the people on the gulf coast deserves to be able to eat snapper.

The part that kills me is that certain companies own wild snapper. Somehow, they are entitled to catch and sell our natural resources -- or even sell the right to catch them. If you want to catch some yourself to eat with your family, well you are screwed.

That really sucks, especially for the charter guys---that's a hard enough way to make a living without the gummint taking away one of the biggest attractions. It wouldn't surprise me a whole lot to see some sort of physical protest, to the point of the fishermen saying, "Go stick it where the sun don't shine."

NMFS doesn't have a clue and is way too powerful.

I'm not even involved in any real aspect, but this pizzes me off. Total lunacy. We saw a 20lb snapper at the freaking pier last Tuesday.

This is either legislative or judicial stupidity at it's best, probably both, or it's as rigged as a 3-masted schooner.

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Originally Posted by Pop Jiggity

I'm not even involved in any real aspect

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The scary thing is that after red snapper, what species will they move on to next? A two week long season on king/spanish/flounder whatever sounds like it could never happen, but not long ago, who could've guessed it would happen with snapper?

What a bunch of bs...that's going to hurt charter guys

11 days,could be 6.

gonna hurt the charter boat bussines bad. the deckhands make most of their money on snapper trips..

Yes we do make most of our money by just snapper trips this crap sucks!! They don't have an idea how many snapper there is out in the gulf