Just one day before the opening of one of Florida’s most anticipated sportfishing seasons, anglers around the state targeting red snapper learned they’d be better off staying at the dock.
For more than a decade, recreational fishermen targeting the prized bright-red fish in Atlantic waters crammed their efforts into tiny seasons, often allowing harvests of four or fewer days as federal officials worked to rebuild a historically overfished population.
While NOAA officials have acknowledged that rebuilding stocks are recovering, but not yet restored to target levels, anglers in recent years have challenged these assessments, questioning continued commercial harvest of the species and arguing red snapper stocks have surpassed the need for such a truncated season.
Earlier in May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a massively expanded red snapper season – 39 days in the Atlantic, up from just two in 2025, and 140 days in the Gulf – courtesy of an Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) granted by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on May 1.
Through the use of a state reef fish survey and voluntary smartphone app during the expanded season, the plan was for FWC to collect improved data and inform future decisions on recreational red snapper seasons. Similar EFPs were issued to Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
But on May 21, in response to a lawsuit filed by the Southeastern Fisheries Association (SFA) along with two additional commercial fishing companies and three individual commercial fishermen challenging the EFPs, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction – canceling the planned season start date just a day later.
“The court found that NMFS had been presented with information indicating that recreational landings under the expanded seasons were likely to exceed the annual catch limit and trigger overfishing, yet NMFS did not address or consider these issues in any meaningful way before issuing the permits,” stated a press release from SFA announcing the injunction.
“The primary driver of high fishing mortality has been recreational dead discards—red snapper killed when anglers fishing for other species bring them up and release them. Because of the high level of ongoing recreational dead discards, very little catch remains available for landings.”
News of the cancellation set off a social media firestorm, with parties from individual anglers and charter guides to even state-run accounts blasting the federal decision – all while commercial fishing is set to continue unaffected.
“Come and Take It,” read a caption from the MyFWC Florida Fish and Wildlife page, with a Florida state flag placed inside the outline of a red snapper.
“It’s not a good decision,” said DeSantis in a press conference addressing the lawsuit, lamenting that the closure may have tanked holiday weekend plans for Florida tourists. “The commercial fishermen, they don’t want recreational fishermen to go out and fish; they want it all for themselves.”
An immediate pivot by Florida state officials allowed the season to open over Memorial Day weekend in state waters – little comfort to Atlantic anglers, whose best catches largely come farther offshore than the 3-nautical-mile line that falls under Florida’s jurisdiction. A statement on FWC’s website gave a subtle nod to the ongoing fight, saying officers “have been notified of the unpredictable nature of the situation and will ensure boaters are provided education within our jurisdictional waters.”
Islamorada captain Jonathan Reynolds is the president of the conservation group South Atlantic Fishing Environmentalists (SAFE) – a crew that prides itself on a membership of working charter captains and tournament anglers rather than, in the organization’s own words, “armchair activists.” The group advocates for science-based catch limits, resisting regulations that “ignore on-the-water reality,” and educating the next generation of anglers.
Speaking to the Weekly by phone on May 26, he characterized the suit as a strategic plan to turn off what could have been one of the best data collection opportunities for red snapper in years.
“The entire permitting process goes through all kinds of peer review, and there must be biological reasons and research reasons why it would be passed — data that can’t be collected in any other way,” he said. “We’ve been trying to figure out an annual catch limit that’s sustainable, and test that. The only way to do that is through an EFP.”
Islamorada captain Kit Mobley, SAFE’s vice president, told the Weekly the suit was an extra stab in the back to charter captains around the state as its leader, SFA executive director Bob Zales II, was once “on our side of the dock.”
“(Zales) is a retired charter captain who used his industry knowledge and connections to shut down a season that would have put money in the pockets of active charter captains who are still making boat payments, paying crew and trying to survive,” Mobley said.
While red snapper aren’t a bread-and-butter species in the Keys, the closure of the season is devastating for captains in northeast Florida and on the state’s west coast, where just the permit to go fish for the species can run into five figures annually.
Reynolds called the backlash “a moment that needs to be seized” by recreational fishermen – one that could drive charter captains across the state toward more organized and united efforts through organizations like SAFE.
“The way that we feel right now, the intensity and the passion, this is the moment when people are listening,” he said. “This is what Florida has been waiting for, because this is the biggest slap in the face – all the smokescreens have been taken away, and we know who’s really behind this. People have to understand the scale of power they actually have – we could create a fight that would be something to be reckoned with.”
FWC Capt. Adam Garrison confirmed to the Weekly that the red snapper season remains open in state waters (3 nautical miles in the Atlantic, 9 in the Gulf) as of press time, with a two-per-angler limit and 20-inch minimum size as the federal lawsuit plays out. In the same statement announcing the injunction, FWC said it plans to re-establish the red snapper season in federal waters through the EFP once it is unfrozen.
To learn more about SAFE’s Red Snapper Alliance initiative, launched this week in response to the federal suit, visit safefishing.org/red-snapper-alliance.
