Sunday, July 7, is the last day of this year’s wide-open recreational red snapper season.
Beginning Friday, the recreational red snapper season will revert to Fridays through Sundays only. One exception will be September’s Labor Day weekend which will run through that Monday holiday.
The move came last week when state fisheries managers estimated recreational reef-fish anglers had taken 513,444 pounds through the latest LA Creel data collection period ending June 16. LA Creel is highly accredited state Wildlife and Fisheries’ real-time estimate for red snapper catches and other species.
That June 16 total is 54.9% of Louisiana’s 934,587-pound annual recreational red snapper allocation, and, apparently, the move was made to slow the catch rate down to ensure there would be enough allocation remaining for the Labor Day weekend and possibly beyond.
The season opened April 15 — much earlier than the Memorial Day opener of past years — with a four-fish-per-day limit and a minimum size of 16 inches imposed on the recreational sector.
When Wildlife and Fisheries secretary Madison Sheahan signed a declaration of emergency to end the seven-day-a-week season it came after state fisheries biologists and managers found the take exceeded anticipated catch rates.
The week-by-week red snapper catch estimates are available on the agency’s website: wlf.louisiana.gov/page/red-snapper.
Joe Macaluso