First speckled trout, now LDWF is saying Redfish stocks are depleted

Whoever says this without addressing pogy boats might as well put on clown paint and eat a big bag of scabby dicks.

There's also no reason to keep a Bull Red which many do. Take your pictures and let them go.

Means of take is irrelevant


If the limit is 5 redfish, do the fish care if you shoot them or hook them?

23-25" is my favorite size to harvest redfish. But I only take 1 fish total and that's my dinner that night for my family. We love blackened redfish. I dont have use for 16-18" fish since they don't serve my purpose as well. On very rare occasion, if it's a bad day and I haven't caught anything worth keeping I will harvest a 27-29" fish if I hook into it at the end of the trip. In fact I will often times target a big redfish towards the end of a slow day by Carolina rigging a live croaker/pinfish/crab in a deep hole/bend.

Yep. And the disturbance of migratory birds and degradation of their habitat.

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Bow fishing being hated isn’t just about taking the 5 redfish per person limit. It’s about running through the ponds all night and not giving the redfish proper time to rest. It’s about shooting undersized reds and then throwing them back. It’s about them accelerating the erosion of the marsh by driving like fricking morons to make their affliction wearing customers laugh and tip well.

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I've been bowfishing more times than most people here go fishing regularly. I've never seen anyone shoot an undersized red. Yall gut hook more undersized reds than people shoot.

There's 10x more gator tails running around in the marsh right now looking for dogris than there are bowfishing rigs. That does way more damage than the few people bowfishing.

But yall probably duck hunt so you don't have a problem with that

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with significant habitat loss; this makes perfect sense

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This chicken is coming home to roost in multiple ways and exponentially increasing.

Add invasives and pogie boats along with increasing recreational pressure and you have a 4 pronged attack

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It’s about running through the ponds all night and not giving the redfish proper time to rest.

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It’s about shooting undersized reds and then throwing them back
this just does not happen. it's very easy to tell size before shooting. There is zero doubt in my mind that more undersized fish are killed via rod-n-reel than bow fishing


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It’s about them accelerating the erosion of the marsh by driving like fricking morons
No argument here

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Think about it... Redfish really have no quarter anymore. You have people in mud boats who would have never fished the ponds hitting them all day and tower boats running around too. Then at night, you have airboats running all through the marsh slinging arrows. The statement seems to be correct about undersized fish but what about the oversized ones?

No one here will convince me you can tell the difference between a 26" and 28: redfish in the water while you are moving in an airboat.

Besides all of that, GPS and satellite maps make no where "secret" anymore and the pressure from increased population fishing during "normal" hours too.

All I can tell you is that places that I fished in Hopedale or Lafitte or Port Sulphur do not hold the same amount of fish it use to. You would see wakes and hear fish busting in the ponds while fishing but in some ponds, I see NOTHING moving. No wakes, no mud billows, nothing......

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with significant habitat loss; this makes perfect sense


Pogey boats are definitely a huge factor as well

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you've also had some serious pressure on the resource as Covid did for fishing what it did for golf. Redfish have been getting hammered on pretty good lately.

But frick POGEY BOATS first and foremost.

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All I can tell you is that places that I fished in Hopedale or Lafitte or Port Sulphur do not hold the same amount of fish it use to. You would see wakes and hear fish busting in the ponds while fishing but in some ponds, I see NOTHING moving. No wakes, no mud billows, nothing......

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As anecdotal as this sounds, it's honestly mind blowing to me how different the redfish stock in lower St. Bernard is compared to what it was 10 years ago. I'm 32 and have fished and hunted the area for the majority of my life. As an outdoorsman, I've never seen a resource change so drastically over a given time period, other than the shift in the duck population. I'm of the opinion that there are several issues.

I am not a fan of bowfishing habits. I know guides and I know how some of them operate. Redfish are pretty local at certain times of the year, and if one guide gets on a big group around Lena, he's gonna call all of his buddies and they are going to shoot the shite out of them in Lena until they're gone. This heavy level of traffic beats up the fish (obviously), the ponds, and runs ducks off during the migration season. I don't think that anybody can reasonably argue otherwise that running around a pond at night in an airboat or a surface drive is a hell of a lot more disturbing to the fish than a guy cruising around on a trolling motor. I think bowfishing needs to be regulated - be it a season, time limitation, equipment limitation, or something else.

The decline in population also coincided with a significant increase in tournament redfishing over that same time period. This seems to have slowed down a bit over the last couple of years, but burn boat habits are also bad. Those heavy slot and slightly over slot fish used to school up in significant numbers in the Reggio and Delacroix marsh during the spring time. Over the years, I can't tell you how many times I've seen burn boats burn 10' off a bank right through a school of pushing fish. They mark the spot, and show back up on tournament day. For the longest time, there was no regulation on this by tournament organizers on pre-fishing time limitations. A lot of these guys also focused on the Reggio area, and burning banks didn't do any favors for land loss up there.

That brings up the next issue, which is obviously habitat loss. Reggio and Myrtle Grove have been hit by it worse than anywhere else I've seen, and both of those areas used to be slot redfish havens. There are entire islands that I used to duck hunt on that are completely gone. My current dog's first hunt was on a piece of ground probably 200 yards by 100 yards wide. It doesn't exist anymore.

For whatever reason, Biloxi Marsh has been saved to an extent. Delacroix has gotten hit with it, but not quite as bad. I think the lack of marsh diversity and protected areas inside has really had a major effect on smaller slot fish habitation and movement.

Also, obviously, pogy boats. I agree with the earlier poster that said if LDWF is going to take a position on harvest numbers but not take a position on pogy boats, something is hilariously wrong.

Bringing all that back around, if this is LDWF suggesting that they are going to start taking a position on redfish stock, I'm all for it. Something needs to change or we are going to end up like Florida.