Gag Grouper
The agency estimates that the 2024 recreational ACL was overfished by more than 100,000 pounds. And even with the State of Florida data program (SRFS) it was estimated we went over by 80,000 pounds. Since Gag Grouper is overfished a payback provision is applied as an accountability measure. The agency acknowledges the stock condition appears to be improving and catch limits are scheduled to increase each year as the stock rebuilds. The Council passed a motion instituting an emergency rule reducing the recreational bag limit to 1-fish per person for the 2025 season only. This will not give us more days but will help mitigate the chance for an overage to pay back the following year. And we will see the agency act upon this in the coming weeks.
In 2026 the Gag Grouper will have an “Operational Assessment” done which will provide more updates to catch advice and work within the current Benchmark Stock Assessment. The data terminal year, or the last year of data used for this assessment, will be 2024 which is far more current and acceptable than the 2019 data terminal year used in the last assessment that is setting the catch advice used for the current fishing season recommendations.
They will be coming out next month or so with the duration of this year’s Gag Grouper season. It will open on September 1st, but we will not get as long of a season as we did last year. If I had to guess… it will be between 6-10 days long this year.
(Written: April 2025)
