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Spotted seatrout: Share your input on future management of this species with FWC

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) needs your input on spotted seatrout management. The FWC is hosting several spotted seatrout in-person public workshops around the state. Learn about the current status of the seatrout fishery, staff’s proposal for future management and share your input by attending one of these workshops.

Workshops will begin at 6 p.m. local time:

July 29: Destin, Destin Community Center, 101 Stahlman Ave.
July 31: Steinhatchee, Steinhatchee Community Center, 1013 Riverside Drive.
Aug. 6: Naples, Collier County Facilities Management, Training Room, 3335 Tamiami Trail E.
Aug 7: Melbourne, Brevard County Government Center, Florida Room, 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way.
Potential changes on which staff will be gathering input include:

Splitting the northwest spotted seatrout management zone into two separate zones including the Western Panhandle (Escambia through Gulf counties) and the Big Bend (Franklin County through Fred Howard Park Causeway in Pinellas County near the Pasco County line).

Moving the southern-most boundary between management zones to create the newly-renamed South Florida (Fred Howard Park Causeway in Pinellas County near the Pasco County line through Broward County) and Central East Coast (Palm Beach through Volusia counties) zones.

Reducing bag limits.
Western Panhandle: 5 to 3 fish.
Big Bend: 5 to 4 fish.
South Florida: 4 to 3 fish.
Central East Coast: 4 to 2 fish.
Northeast: 6 to 5 fish.

Changing the current recreational and commercial slot limits to 15 to 19 inches.
Current recreational slot limit is 15 to 20 inches (with one over 20 inches allowed).
Current commercial slot limit is 15 to 24 inches.
Prohibiting all harvest of spotted seatrout 19 inches and larger.
Prohibiting captain and crew from keeping a personal bag limit on a for-hire trip.
Re-establishing the February closure in Western Panhandle.

If you can’t attend an in-person workshop, provide online comments at http://www.MyFWC.com/SaltwaterComments.

Changing the current recreational and commercial slot limits to 15 to 19 inches.
Current recreational slot limit is 15 to 20 inches (with one over 20 inches allowed).
Current commercial slot limit is 15 to 24 inches.
Prohibiting all harvest of spotted seatrout 19 inches and larger.
Prohibiting captain and crew from keeping a personal bag limit on a for-hire trip.
Re-establishing the February closure in Western Panhandle.

These sound like reasonable management decisions. It seems like there has been a good amount of complaints on all of the forums about the decline of the Trout fishery. It makes sense to stop the harvest of the larger breeders.

"Prohibiting all harvest of spotted seatrout 19 inches and larger"

not sure this one is accurate, I read change the slot to 15-19, none over. I'd be ok changing it to 16-19.

I'll just go ahead and correct myself - what's quoted is what it says, not clear on whether 19 would be legal or not. Maybe these are choices for consideration and not all inclusive?

Reducing bag limits
Western Panhandle: 5 to 3 fish
Big Bend: 5 to 4 fish
South Florida: 4 to 3 fish
Central East Coast: 4 to 2 fish
Northeast: 6 to 5 fish
Changing the current recreational and commercial slot limits to 15 inches to 19
Current recreational slot limit is 15 to 20 inches (with one over 20 inches allowed)
Current commercial slot limit is 15 to 24 inches
Prohibiting all harvest of spotted seatrout 19 inches and larger
Prohibiting captain and crew from keeping a personal bag limit on a for-hire trip
Re-establishing the February closure in Western Panhandle
If you can’t attend an in-person workshop, provide online comments at MyFWC.com/SaltwaterComments.

Cut and paste from the press release.

I know Dave, my apologies. I didn't realize the options were contradictory.

Looks good to me, I’ll be at the meeting.

Just like the red snapper fiasco, more regulation based on inaccurate and incomplete data imo. Not sure I understand why they're considering reducing the bag limits from 5 to 4 in the Big Bend and 5 to 3 in the western panhandle. There's no trout shortage over here in Gulf county that I'm aware of. Maybe it should be the other way around.

I have only fished once this year so far but I wonder if anyone else has seen the same thing I did with the trout caught around Keaton beach. Me and my daughter caught about 8 keeper trout and a TON of short trout. However, the short trout seemed to be really short. Most seemed to be in the 11-13” size, we caught some in the 14” range but not many compared to the smaller size. I understand that there is normally always more smaller fish than larger fish, but compared to years before it seemed skewed more than normal. We usually catch a good number of fish that measure just short but this time 85-90% were small enough that it was easy to tell they were short.

I wonder if it is due to a specific year spawning crop that was somewhat lost to a storm or Red tide. My guess was the storm that hit Keaton Beach several years ago. Could have diminished survival rate of the recent spawned fry.

I noticed the same thing around SGI this year. I figured it was caused by Hurricane Michael. I caught more little shorts this year than the last five years combined. Looked like a lot of reports around St Marks were indicating the same results.

I don’t think it would be Michael as that class of fish would still be pretty small. I can’t remember the name of the storm but there was one a few years ago that might be the right storm for the fish that would be in the 14” range. Also could be the red tide also. Purely anecdotal but it is what I observed and haven’t observed before.