Season closes today

DESTIN, FL — It was good while it lasted.
   
Today, however, is the last day to keep a red snapper.
   
“It’s been as good as it ever gets,” captain Tommy Browning said earlier this week after he backed in on the boat Finest Kind from a six-hour trip with a limit of red snapper and king mackerel.
   
“It’s a shame,” he said of the closure. “There ain’t no shortage. We’ve been throwing back keepers.”
   
The red snapper season has taken several blows in recent months from federal and state regulators who say the fishery is in peril.
   
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted at a meeting at Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in February to shorten the recreational red snapper fishing season in state waters from April 15 through Oct. 31 to June 1 through Sept. 30, making it compatible with a shorter federal season.
   
But then the federal governing board decided to close the season in federal waters Aug. 14. So the state revisited the issue and voted to end the snapper season on the same day.
   
So the snapper season went from what used to be about a seven-month season to a little more than two months, with a scaledback limit of two snapper per person.
   
Destin charter boat captains say they are about to take another hit.
   
“It’s not looking good,” said Harold Staples of the charter boat Al-Lin. “We’re not expecting much in the fall” after the closure kicks in.
   
Staples said he had one customer book a 12-hour trip in October, the month of the Destin Fishing Rodeo, but he called back and cut it to an eight-hour trip when he realized they couldn’t land red snapper.
   
Staples said that after his scheduled trips this week, there are “two more on the books, period. We’re just not getting any phone calls.”
   
Browning said that after today, his bookings are “slim to nothing.” He said that fishing trips have dropped more than half for most on the docks.
   
Captain Ken Bolden of the Just B Cause, who landed one of the biggest snapper on the docks this summer, a 25-pounder, said the season has been “incredible. It’s been so easy to find them.”
   
And the ones showing up have been a good grade at 18-inches-plus.
   
“If it even looks like you’ve got to measure it, I go to a different spot,” Bolden said.
   
As for the future, “it’s looking really slow.” Bolden said.
   
He said fishermen now will target triggerfish, mingo, amberine and king mackerel.
   
“I wish there was something we could say to let ’em know that snapper are in abundance,” Bolden said.
   
Some captains say the slow economy also is contributing to their lack of bookings.
   
“Between the economy and the fact we can’t keep snapper … put the two together, it’s not good,” said captain Kirk Reynolds of the SS Enterprise.