CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Fishermen and women around the state will now have to cut back on taking home a certain fish - and it's one that's pretty popular in area.
Last fall, Texas Parks and Wildlife made their way around the coast to hear from fishers about the state of the spotted seatrout population.
Hoping to conserve the declining species, the department ultimately decided to cut back on the number of trout anglers can take home.
Those new regulations go into effect this Tuesday, March 26.
David Rowsey is a longtime fisherman. After moving to the Coastal Bend in 1995 and becoming a fulltime fishing guide in 2011, he noticed that the abundance of seatrout wasn't what it used to be.
“Our numbers have been going down for a long time, for probably 10 years,” he said. “This area that we're in, The Laguna Madre and Baffin, is really thought of and proven to be one of the best trophy trout fisheries in the world. But the more you take out, the less of them there are."
With an already declining trout fishery, freezing temperatures the Coastal Bend experienced back in 2021 only made matters worse.
"It's estimated that we lost 80% of our trout during that freeze. At that time, we could keep five fish within a 15-to-25-inch slot limit. One of those fish per day could be over 25 inches," Rowsey said.
New Texas Parks and Wildlife spotted seatrout regulations will mean anglers can only keep three fish that are between 15 and 20 inches. If anglers catch trout over 30 inches, only one will be allowed as part of their daily bag limit.
"The Texas coastal population is expected to double in the next 25 years, which a lot of people don't realize, and our old limits are just not sustainable anymore," Rowsey said. "Trying to find the balance to make everybody happy is really tough. You know, I'm not getting what I want. People that want to eat all the fish aren't getting what they want, but there's got to be some compromise in there."
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