Texas red snapper season set for 97 days in federal waters

The 2019 red snapper season for federal waters off the Texas coast is set to be longer than it has been in a decade, beginning June 1 and running 97 days.

The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and the National Marine Fisheries Service entered into an agreement in April 2018, allowing TPWD to to set the season for the private angling component for red snapper caught in state and federal waters that are landed in the state, the same as in other Gulf locales (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida). Each state also must provide a separate announcement notifying anglers when their season will open and close.

The states also must monitor red snapper private angler landings and close their seasons if the state’s assigned quota is reached or projected to be reached.

Bag and size limits will remain unchanged at two fish per person per day, with a 16-inch minimum size limit in federal waters. It should be noted that red snapper fishing is open all year in Texas state waters with a four-fish per person daily bag and a 15-inch minimum.

In addition to the recreational sector, the 2019 red snapper fishing season for federally permitted for-hire vessels is 62 days in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The overall quota for red snapper in the Gulf for the commercial and recreational sectors is 15.1 million pounds whole weight. The recreational sector is allocated 49 percent of that, which is 7,399,000 pounds. Of that figure, 57.7 percent is allocated to the private angling component and 42.3 percent is allocated to the for-hire component.

Last year’s recreational red snapper framework in federal waters off Texas was 82 days, a far cry from the 2017 recreational red snapper season which ran just three days.

Anglers are urged to download the iSnapper app on their smartphones and report red snapper landings.