While federal and Florida state officials come to terms on this year’s Gulf gag grouper season, an announcement of the dates is expected any day. Anglers in the Southeast are hoping for a season longer than last year’s. That drastically reduced season scuttled trips, cost businesses revenue, and frustrated many anglers, especially along Florida’s west coast, where gag grouper holds high status among anglers.
“Last year, reducing the gag grouper season from 6 months to 45 days was a detriment to not only myself and many other guides in the area but also to our tourism industry as a whole,” said Capt. Katie Jo Davis of Yankeetown, Florida.
Capt. Davis runs a Young Gulfshore 22, perfect for shallow water grouper out of her home marina, Fisher’s Marina and Campground in Yankeetown. Her home waters are known for hot gag grouper fishing. With her vessel, she can fish inshore shallows for trout, reds, and other species and go up to 25 miles offshore to target fish, including gag, on rockpiles. In the Crystal River area where she often fishes, 25 miles out puts anglers over 30-foot depths.
“I’m able to catch gag grouper year-round in this area,” Davis says. Most often she’ll fish with a Shimano Twin Power 8000 spinner on a Shimano Trevala rod and use live pinfish or frozen herring on the bottom.
“Water temperatures play an important role in determining exactly how far the gag grouper move in and out from shore,” Davis says. “If the water temperature is still too hot, many of those fish will stay a bit offshore where the water is cooler,” she says. “However, there are always gag grouper around to catch.”
Shorter Gag Grouper Season, Less Tourism
Davis says the shortened gag grouper season last year caused trip cancellations by anglers who target gags, especially for charters out to the Middle Grounds. She expects the same this year if the season comes up short on dates to fish.
“I have not noticed a decline in our gag grouper population here,” Davis says. “For myself, should gag grouper be shortened or closed, I will have to focus on targeting other fish such as hogfish and mangrove snapper. Fortunately, I can always switch to inshore fishing, which is always great in our area.”
Federal fishery managers consider gag grouper in the Gulf to be overfished based on a 2022 stock assessment. Any overage to the annual catch limit (ACL) is deducted from the following year’s ACL. By this means, federal officials plan to rebuild the stock to more sustainable levels.
Gag Grouper Numbers Revised
The good news is that the magnitude of the payback applied to the 2024 annual catch limit is much smaller than the 2023 overage that was first calculated. That bit of good fortune happened after a loud public outcry over last year’s shortened season and the Gulf Council’s request that NOAA Fisheries review the landings estimates.
At their meeting this April, the Gulf Council received notice that NOAA revised their initial recreational landings data for gag grouper. According to the presentation, the estimates were lowered due to three main data collection factors: additional responses to catch surveys, a reweighting of highly influential catch interviews, and changes to fishery survey intercepts. The revisions were all part of the transition from the federal data collection program to the Florida state data collection system. With the revised data, the 2024 overage adjusted annual catch limit for recreational anglers is 163,376 pounds gross weight. This overage, lower than expected at the start of the year, is being used to calculate the season dates. That curious twist in fisheries statistics might result in a longer season than many anglers expect.
With that glimmer of hope and the recently announced 103-day season for Gulf red snapper set to open June 1, anglers and charter captains like Katie Jo hope they can target both species at least some days this coming fall. The margin of chances for a longer season may be slim, but that doesn’t stop anglers passionate about gag grouper fishing from hoping for the best.
Atlantic Gag Grouper Season
On the Atlantic side, gag grouper season along with other shallow-water grouper species opened on May 1. However, the gag season is slated to close on June 15 because NOAA Fisheries estimates that the recreational landings will reach the annual catch limit (ACL) of 133, 075 pounds gutted weight by that time. NOAA Fisheries reduced the length of the season because recreational landings in 2023 exceeded the set recreational catch limits. The way things are lining up, boating a keeper gag grouper off Florida this year might be far more difficult than ever before.
