South Atlantic Red Snapper Gets October Opening and New State Pilot Permits

South Atlantic anglers have an October red snapper opening to plan around, but the federal season and the new state pilot programs are not interchangeable. NOAA Fisheries has announced a three-day federal recreational season and issued new exempted fishing permits to Florida, Georgia and South Carolina for longer openings tied to recreational fishing data collection.

The federal season opens at 12:01 a.m. local time on October 9 and closes at 12:01 a.m. on October 12, leaving October 9–11 as the fishing days. The federal bag limit is one red snapper per person per day, with no minimum size limit. North Carolina anglers have access through that federal opening; North Carolina is not among the three states receiving these new pilot permits.

For eligible participants, the state pilots authorize harvest from October 9 through October 22. Participation requires the necessary state licenses and federal permits for the waters fished and the place of landing. Each trip must begin and end at a landing location in the state where the participant is registered. Anglers enrolled in an exempted-permit project must land and possess recreational red snapper under that permit, not stack its allowance on top of the federal season. Check the participating state's registration, reporting and harvest requirements before leaving the dock.

These are new approvals, not simply a resumption of the permits halted earlier this year. NOAA says the original permits were rescinded after a federal court issued a preliminary injunction, and the new permits were modified to address that decision. The American Sportfishing Association's September 22 update follows the agency's September 21 bulletin and confirms that the fall programs will test ways to improve catch, effort and discard information.

The pilot harvest limits are 83,720 fish for Florida, 4,859 for Georgia and 8,695 for South Carolina. Those are program totals, not individual bag limits. NOAA and the states will review October's results before deciding whether another opening is warranted in December. No December season is guaranteed by this announcement.

More legal fishing time is the immediate gain. The longer-term work is collecting dependable information from those trips while keeping harvest and discards within sustainable levels. For anglers, that means treating the pilot's reporting obligations as part of the fishing trip, not an optional step after the fish are cleaned. Better data is the purpose of the extra access; the results still have to be collected and evaluated.