A few days after his first red snapper fishing trip of 2025, Dr. Marcus Stelly of Lafayette couldn’t help but be impressed by the limits reeled in by his crew of another veteran saltwater fisherman and three teen-aged anglers aboard his boat.

The 47-year-old all-around outdoorsman who also loves to hunt ducks looked back with satisfaction at the catch and timely call to head out on opening weekend in the Sportsman’s Paradise. They tapped the red snapper on Saturday, May 3, two days after the season opened.

The 2025 private recreational red snapper season started May 1 in both state and federal waters, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The season will run seven days a week with a daily bag limit of four red snapper per person and a minimum length of 16 inches.

The season will stay open until recreational harvests approach or reach Louisiana’s annual private recreational allocation of 894,955 pounds. The harvest is monitored on a weekly basis by LA Creel, an active management method utilized by LDWF.

Unfavorable weather conditions along the south central Louisiana coast quashed many plans for Acadiana’s avid offshore fishermen to get out and tap the red snapper population Thursday, May 1, as well as the next few days of the weekend.

Stelly, a diagnostic radiology specialist who was born and raised in Lafayette, and crew had a tuna fishing charter trip scheduled originally for that day out of Venice. However, due to dicey weather and water conditions, the charter boat captain over there suggested rescheduling the outing later.

There was no stay at home (or at the family’s camp) on this day, however, for Stelly. Like his father, the late C.L. Jack Stelly, Stelly enjoys spending quality time with family and friends, on the water or in a duck blind, as he has shown so many times with a fishin’ and huntin’ buddy, Dr. Eric Elias of Lafayette, formerly of New Iberia. Stelly quickly made a decision and left his family camp at Cypremort Point in his 31-foot Contender with his young teenage son, Charlie Stelly, and the youngster’s friends from Our Lady of Fatima School, Jacques Stelly and Sam St. Pierre, and his brother-in-law, Zurben Barras.

Before heading offshore via Southwest Pass, Stelly and his crew fished for speckled trout in Vermilion Bay. The speckled trout, which have been biting like gangbusters this spring, failed to cooperate, a development that prompted the skipper to “give it a shot” because weather conditions permitted traveling offshore.

“We had a nice trip. We ran after noon after all the weather passed through,” he said.

Stelly drove the Contender through “a little chop” at the most for 60 miles out to the Marsh Island blocks he has learned so well in the Gulf of America, formerly the Gulf of Mexico. The fish, sizable red snapper at that, were waiting around the oil rigs.

“They were all pretty good. They all had a few fish on them,” he said, noting many of the red snapper they caught were on the bottom in 120-foot depths.

The anglers dropped and racked up using pogies for natural bait plus an artificial soft plastic that’s turning a lot of heads and catching beaucoup offshore species all over the world, the Nomad Squidtrex.

Stelly’s Contender crew got the five-man creel limit of red snapper, all weighing 10 to 15 pounds, which he called “average size.”

“We were keeping most of what we caught,” he said, noting the late start and desire to get back to the camp in daylight hours discouraged culling opps.

Their first-day catch of the new season was “pretty much on par for the last few years,” he said. The only other species they latched onto was a shark, he added.

As far as he knows, Stelly said only one other boat went red snapper fishing from Cypremort Point over the weekend and that trip was made on Sunday.

His boat’s next red snapper trip probably will be at least a couple weeks away, he said.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.