Alabama red snapper season begins June 1

Holding a meeting about fishing in the gulf approximately 300 miles from the coast of Alabama might seem unusual to the uninitiated, but attendance would tell otherwise.

About 30 people gathered in Mountain Brook City Hall on Thursday, May 24, to hear about this year’s red snapper season, which will operate differently and for a longer period compared to years past.

“We wanted to have a meeting up here — meeting’s kind of a weird term, more of a conversation — with people up here because you guys come to the coast and fish,” said Col. M. Scott Bannon, director of the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. 

This fishing season will be different from years past, Bannon said, as the 2018 red snapper fishing season will be the first time the state is under an Exempted Fishing Permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Under the EFP, all five gulf states — Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and Texas — had to come to an agreement on how much red snapper could be caught in the Gulf of Mexico and how large of a “piece of pie” each state would get, Bannon said. 

Alabama’s slice of the pie for private anglers is 984,291 pounds of red snapper for private anglers — federally-permitted for-hire vessels are not included in the count or the EFP — according to data from the DCNR. In comparison, Louisiana’s share is around 743,000 pounds, Mississippi gets nearly 138,000.

Alabama’s season for private anglers is “potentially” 47 days, Bannon said, starting June 1 and continuing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Labor Day on Sept. 3, as well as the full week of June 29-July 8. Bannon said that the “potentially” was added to the number because they will have a chance to shorten or lengthen the season depending on how many pounds are caught by certain checkpoints.

“On windy days, the wind goes up, the catch goes down. Previously you lost those days, they were no longer your days,” Bannon said, “but now, we have a certain amount of pounds of fish. It’s not really the days. So if the wind effort goes up and the catch effort goes down, we still get those days because if I need to, I’ll add days to the season.”

The flipside, he said, was if the weather is wonderful and a lot of people hit the waters, they might close the season early. They’ll track the season with a graph on outdooralabama.com, Bannon said, so people can check that out to stay up to date on the poundage caught.

Under Alabama’s EFP, private anglers will be able to fish once a day and catch and keep two red snapper, which must be more than 16 inches long. Their boats, Bannon said, can go out as many times as they want; the limits are not on particular vessels, but rather individual anglers. Those catches will need to be reported on Snapper Check, an online program that keeps track of how many red snapper are caught throughout the season. It’s required to report, Bannon said, and not doing so can result in a fine up to $1,000. Snapper Check will not be used as an enforcement tool, he added, and he encouraged people to accurately report the number of snapper they catch — even if it goes over the two fish limit.

And for people who think it’s better to not report if the poundage gets close to the limit, Bannon said choosing to not report could actually work against them.

“It is better to get those real numbers, and maybe we close a couple of days early, but then I feel better about how I do next season,” Bannon said. “If we get to August and our reporting rate stays around 30 percent, I’m probably not going to give you Labor Day weekend if we’re close.”

If reporting is up, however, Bannon said their data can be more accurate and will allow them the chance to estimate if they can make it through the four days of Labor Day weekend without going over their poundage.

As they plan for red snapper season, Bannon just encouraged folks to keep a few things in mind: “Report, report, report,” Bannon said. “Snapper Check, Snapper Check, Snapper Check.”

For more information on regulations and this year's red snapper season, go to outdooralabama.com.