Many prayers were answered on March 7 when the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission set the opening date and regulations for the recreational red snapper harvest for Louisiana.

The meeting’s results were so heavenly that Teche Area offshore boat captains like Jacques Hebert of Patoutville are looking forward to the upcoming red snapper season for recreational fishermen like they haven’t since before the 2000s and 2010s. How welcome are the new season and regulations, which include an increase from three to four red snapper in the daily creel limit per person and a 16-inch minimum length limit?

“It’s going to be fun,” Hebert said a few days after the LWFC meeting in Baton Rouge.

What’s more, the season is scheduled to start April 15, a blessing for a sport so dependent on favorable weather and water conditions in this region of the Gulf of Mexico.

“It looks like they’re going to give us a real snapper season. Oh, yeah, I’m very happy,” Hebert said. “I really didn’t expect that. I thought we’d be starting Memorial Day Weekend maybe to Labor Day with a three-fish limit. That’s kind of how it’s been done in the past.”

Louisiana’s recreational red snapper harvest has started the past few years on Memorial Day Weekend after opening May 24 in 2019, May 22 in 2020 and May 29 in 2021.

The 2024 season will run seven days a week and remain open until the recreational landings approach or reach the state’s annual private recreational allocations of 934,587 pounds. Past seasons included three-day weekends (four-day holiday weekends for Memorial Day. Fourth of July and Labor Day) for several years.

Hebert, who skippers the Sea Mistress, a 36-foot LAFCO hull, appreciates the flexibility of a full season because it begins so early, for starters. There’s also a safety net in case original plans are wiped out by inclement weather.

And, for sure, Hebert wants to get out on the water opening day, a Friday, this year.

“Well, I haven’t serviced my boat yet. I’m trying to get that and other things done. If the weather’s good, good. If the weather’s not good, you know what? We’ll wait till it is because we have a snapper season. It should be fun,” he said.

Hebert, who celebrates his 64th birthday March 15, also appreciates the four fish daily creel limit per person.

“Well, that’s plenty of fish. That’s a boatload of fish,” he said. “There’s a big snapper fishery around here

The dynamics are ever-changing, he noted in the same breath. For example, the red snapper habitat is disappearing in the northwest region of the Gulf.

Hebert said, “What’s happened on our end is prime habitat is being dismantled. They’re taking a lot of oilfield structures out. The Gulf doesn’t even look like it did five years ago. It’s strange, very strange.

“Last year we ran all the way to the Garden Banks. Once we got 40 miles off the beach it was clear, nothing out there all the way to Garden Banks. There was always plenty of oil and gas platforms way out,” said the owner of Streamline Industries LLC, which provides high quality machining services and manufactures specialized equipment for the oil and gas, sugar and chemical industries.

For more information on the red snapper season, go to www.wlf.louisiana.gov.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.