Anglers should enjoy good fishing, weather permitting!
Sportsmen should find excellent red snapper action all along the Louisiana coast when the season opens at 12:01 a.m. May 1 with a daily creel of four fish per person.
“The season quota this year is 882,439 pounds, slightly less than 2025,” said Jason Adriance, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries finfish program manager in New Orleans. “The allocation this year is a little less than the 894,955-pound allocation in 2025 because we had a ‘payback’ this year. We went slightly over the quota in 2025.”
With no hurricanes hitting the Louisiana coast in 2025, private recreational anglers brought in 947,103 pounds of snapper, about six percent above the allocation. The 2025 season had a payback of 39,632 pounds from a 2024 overage. The season ends when anglers reach the quota limit.
“Season lengths vary each year,” Adriance said. “Weather is probably the biggest factor in how often people get out to fish as well as a big factor in how quickly we reach our quota. The 2025 season lasted 200 days and ended Nov. 16. In 2024, it went 151 days, but we had some in-season adjustments. In 2023, the season went 220 days.”
Good stock
The stock looks good for anglers to catch some big red snapper. However, Adriance reported that fish lengths and weights trended slightly downward in recent years, but the average age of red snapper caught remains relatively steady.
“We don’t see any issues with the stock this year,” Adriance said. “It should be a good year for snapper fishermen if we don’t get any major hurricanes. More recent recruitment into the stock could potentially mean more smaller fish recruiting into the fishery available for folks to catch. Some of that could be that folks are happy with a four-fish bag limit and happy with the first four fish they catch.”
Some better places to fish for snapper off the Louisiana coast include out of Venice, Grand Isle, Fourchon, Cocodrie, the Vermilion Basin and Cameron among other places. Kevin Beach with the Mexican Gulf Fishing Company (www.mgfishing.com) runs out of Venice Marina.
“Our 2025 snapper season was outstanding,” Beach said. “It started really off the charts with crazy numbers of big fish. In 2025, we had piles of fish weighing more than 30 pounds. Plenty of days, our average was in the 20s with 12- to 15-pound fish common for us. Sometimes, we caught snapper one nautical mile south of the mouth of the Mississippi River.”
Fish habitat
Most people fish the highly visible petroleum platforms rising from the Gulf. In the past few years, oil companies deactivated many older drilling rigs, but some decommissioned platforms remain in the water as fish habitat under the Louisiana Rigs to Reefs program. The LDWF manages more than 600 artificial reefs including some in water as much as 400 feet deep. These structures still hold fish.
“I like to start fishing a little bit shallower at the beginning of the season and work my way into deeper water,” Beach said. “Don’t be afraid to fish the bottom in 400 feet of water, especially later in the season. Some of those deeper waters farther out have less pressure so we might find bigger fish. We’ve caught giant snapper on deep-drop grouper trips off the bottom in 680 feet of water.”
Not all red snapper hold right at the bottom. Frequently, bigger snapper suspend higher in the water column. Anglers commonly chum them closer to the surface, even in deep water. With high-tech electronics today, boaters can locate fish and bottom structures more easily.
For more fishing seasons and limits, see www.wlf.louisiana.gov/page/recreational-fishing.
