The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission took emergency action Wednesday, moving to temporarily alter spotted seatrout regulations in response to the significant fish kill that resulted from February's severe freeze.
The current statewide speckled trout regulations are a five fish daily bag limit and 15-25 inch slot limit with the ability to keep one fish over 25 inches long. The temporary Laguna Madre regulations will drop the daily bag to three fish and the slot limit to 17-23 inches. The Laguna Madre regulations will affect inshore waters South of the JFK Causeway, including adjacent beachfronts from Packery Channel, down to the Rio Grande.
"I agree with the staff recommendation,” said commissioner Jeanne Latimer during Wednesday's work session.
“We as a Commission, I feel, have always tried to err on the side of caution to protect any resources. This is just something that I feel needs to be done for the interim to help protect that spawning biomass."
The emergency regulations will take effect after the motion is filed with the Texas secretary of state, and the intended implementation date is April 1. The changes will be in effect for 120 days or less, if rescinded by the commission. Seine bag and gill net surveys will give coastal fisheries managers a clearer picture of the freeze's devastation in the summer and will determine if any other regulatory changes will be needed for speckled trout on the Texas coast.
TPWD director of coastal fisheries Robin Riechers said the changes have the potential to increase the spawning biomass by 27 percent over a generation. The lion’s share of the benefit comes from the revised slot limit (21 percent).
Speckled trout spawn from April through October and are prolific producers. These regulatory adjustments are intended to help the species rebound in a region hit particularly hard by the freeze.
TPWD estimated 3.8 million fish were killed coastwide, the largest fish kill since approximately 6.2 million mortalities in December 1989. Most of the fish killed by the 2021 freeze, 91 percent, are considered bait fish; silver perch, anchovies, mullet, hardheads, etc. The speckled trout mortalities are part of the remainder, an estimated 328 thousand recreationally important fish that includes black and red drum, sand trout, sheepshead and gray snapper.
The Lower Coast suffered the most. The Upper and Laguna Madre account for 81 percent of the “game fish” mortalities. By contrast, Galveston Bay and Sabine Lake had less than one percent each and Matagorda had two percent. The kill event slowly worsened southward, with San Antonio Bay accounting for four percent, then Aransas five and Corpus Christi seven, before significantly steepening in the Laguna Madre.
The two recreational species that were impacted the most coastwide were spotted seatrout (48 percent) and black drum (31 percent).
An estimated 104,000 spotted seatrout were killed in just the Lower Laguna Madre. Paired with the Upper Laguna Madre, the bay systems combined for nearly 90 percent of the total speckled trout killed by the winter storm. The Upper Laguna Madre’s black drum were also hit especially hard, making up 78 percent of the coastwide kill of that species.
“When we add up the Lower Laguna Madre and the Upper Laguna Madre, and you add up the (speckled trout) mortalities in both of those… It is only about 20 percent less than what we saw in the 1983 freeze in the Laguna Madre,” Riechers told the commission.
“So, certainly a significant impact there in the Lower Laguna Madre and the Upper Laguna Madre on spotted seatrout.”
Meanwhile, sand seatrout was the leading “game species” killed in Corpus Christi Bay. Sand trout and sheepshead made up the bulk in Matagorda. The kill in Sabine Lake was nearly exclusively red and black drum. Spotted seatrout was the leading recreational species killed in Galveston, San Antonio and Aransas bays.
Riechers said the emergency action in the Laguna Madre was taken with considerations for previous bag limit reductions, growth in popularity of catch-and-release, dynamics of angling pressure in bay systems and the upcoming spawning season.
“By taking this type of action, it’s a precautionary action. It’s targeted towards where we feel like we had the most impact. But what it’s really doing is keeping fish in the water for this spawning season, as we try to determine and assess what the impacts are through our gill nets and through other sampling,” Riechers said.
“It basically is keeping fish in the water right now to spawn.”
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Laguna Madre speckled trout regulations changing after fish kill - Houston Chronicle
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