Red snapper limits
 

Long story, so i will try to make it short.

I started fishing offshore in the gulf in the early 80's 30 to 100 miles. Back in them days red snapper were rare in the east gulf offshore from say Clearwater FL. I fished every week for years and i was lucky to get maybe 5 red snapper a year, Now you can get 5 red snapper on just about every place that holds grouper and snapper in 10 mins time. Red snapper have taken over to the point you can't catch over fish and they hog the bait like pigs and don't allow other kinds of bottom fish to bite.

The goverment has put such heavy regs on the red snapper that it is no longer fun to fish offshore as you can only keep them about 6 weeks out of a year and only can keep two per day. These fish breed and grow like rats and it is getting old catching 15 red snapper to one Mangrove snapper to only throw them back in the water. We need a new system with the limits and open seasons.

Just the last 10 years the red snapper have just blown up and we are seeing them in places we have not since the late 60's. They were fished hard in the late 50's and pretty much gone by the later 70's. I was offshore yesterday and threw back about a 100lbs of red snapper and only had one mangrove snapper to keep.

The government just has a lot of inertia. It's very difficult to make changes in it's direction, either to get it started, stop it, or alter course.

Has anyone presented a case to them showing where the blown up population is being detrimental to other more threatened sea life?

In any event, red snapper is some good eating fish! Yum.....

Yes, many have. But like they handle everything else they do it wrong.