NOAA Fisheries hasn’t been exactly kind to Mississippi’s offshore anglers. Anyone who has fished for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico over the decades has been treated to a roller coaster of shifting seasons, perplexing data and a stubborn insistence on the status quo.
On NOAA’s watch, we’ve had year-long seasons on depleted stocks, and three-day seasons on booming stocks. NOAA’s data system has told us that there was nearly no harvest during peak activity of Mississippi’s season, and a few years later that same data system said the state’s anglers caught almost 350,000 pounds in just five days. It made no sense, and Mississippi wasn’t the only state to notice it.
