Redfish, Striped Bass on Similar Downward Trajectories

In the Louisiana bayou there is a fight brewing that is quite similar to what we here in the Northeast are wrestling with over striped bass.

On the way into the marsh last week I noticed the QR code for a “redfish survey” by the American Saltwater Guides Association on the bow of my friend’s boat — he’s a guide from the Keys who carpet bags in the bayou for the fall — and scanned it. I was not at all shocked that it led me to a very clever survey about what redfish mean to Louisiana.

Redfishing in the marshes of southern Louisiana is awesome. Huge numbers of redfish storm into its vast marshes in late summer and fall to feed on the region’s famous shrimp. For decades they have been both abundant and large in size.

But just like striper fishing in Montauk this past spring and in the New York Bight this fall, what you see in the hot spots does not always tell the full story.

And like with striped bass here, Louisiana in the last few decades has been reaping the benefits of a stock of fish that was robust and thriving.

And like with striped bass here, plenitude led to gluttony on the part of fishermen and carelessness on the part of fisheries managers and the political influencers who influence them.

Mid-sized redfish are prized for the table — just a step below spotted seatrout. The larger fish are a highly sought after trophy that drives a large and growing light-tackle sportfishing community.

The libertarian state’s large rural population are not big fans of regulators telling them what they can and can’t keep for dinner. The state banned commercial fishing for redfish in the 1980s but has put only the most modest limits on recreational harvest.

Each fisherman can keep five redfish per day — only one of which can be over 27 inches, a subtle nod to conservation of the trophy “bulls” — and often the only thing that keeps most from bringing home their limit of reds every day is most seem to prefer to bring home seatrout, of which they may keep a whopping 25 per day as small as 12 inches.

At the end of the day last week I overheard a fisherman telling his wife over the phone that he and five buddies had brought 28 reds back to the dock for the fillet table.

But now the stock — to the surprise of almost no one who had been paying the slightest attention — is in steep decline. Catches are at their lowest rate since the stock rebuilt following the cessation of commercial fishing in the 1980s. State fisheries managers are embarking on the first broad stock assessment they have done since 2006 (all of this sounding familiar?). Even before the assessment is complete, biologists have already said the harvest needs to be cut by 35 percent, at the minimum. Many fishermen think it should — and can — be cut by a lot more.

The rise of the light tackle, primarily catch-and-release fishery has brought a lot of new anglers into the bayou, many of whom have very different priorities from those looking to stuff coolers full to the top, and they are trying to show their teeth now to the political bigs in charge. And they have realized that the best way to do that is, of course, putting money on the table.

The survey I took asked questions about how much anglers were spending on guides — this survey was aimed specially at customers of for-hire guides — on hotels, on gas and food, on fishing tackle and how concerned they were with keeping fish as compared to catching trophy fish.

The approach is a smart one. In the case of redfish, this was an effort by guides, whose clients are largely catch-and-release fishermen, to show what the economic impact of their section of the fishery is. If they can put a dollar amount on it, they can boost the power of their voices when it comes time to hash out regulations.

It’s an approach that I would love to see brought to the Northeast and the striped bass fishery.

With the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission showing only the meekest of willingness to rein in the harvest of striped bass over the objections of the recreational fishing business lobby (do not confuse that with recreational fishermen) and continuing to allow states to get away with ill-advised or purposefully deceptive alternative rules to what the federal experts have said should be required, what is needed is something that shows the political power brokers how much money fishermen who are less concerned with catching dinner than catching an Instagram post are pouring into the economy.

Like striped bass, redfish face ecological headwinds and loss of critical habitat for their breeding and nursery success and rebuilding both stocks may not be as easy as it was in the 1990s.

Both species have a large body of big, old fish that is driving spectacular fishing in certain places and at certain times but which is gradually dwindling through the attrition of catch-and-release mortality and simple biological losses to old age or predators. When they are gone, there is currently no robust stock of smaller fish replacing their numbers.

Until fishermen actively prioritize killing fewer fish by raising size limits, eliminating “conservation equivalency” and stopping wasteful practices like snag-and-drop or no-size-limit commercial regulations — and make those priorities known to those who really only care about campaign donations or their lobbying careers — we will not be able to move the needle in the right direction.

Catch ’em up. Happy holidays.